This Blog's History: Melting Times

It's Friday and here's another edition of This Friday in This Blog's History. Like last week, today's throw back takes us back to 2014 when my daughter developed her own science experiment of determining how quickly ice will melt. It took 10 minutes and 45 seconds to melt an ice cube outside when it was 79 degrees Fahrenheit. She was pretty proud of her idea! :-)

Melting Times (Ice)

The Wizard's Treasure - Book Review

I recently finished the fourth and final book in Irene Radford's Dragon Nimbus series, titled "The Wizard's Treasure". The fourth book in the series is a bit different than the prior three. The focus moves away from the main characters to two minor characters in the first three books, magicians Robb and Marcus. The two are mentioned in the first three books, but these end with the whereabouts of Robb and Marcus unknown.

I enjoyed the book, as I do most books, but it doesn't hold up as well as the first three. I'm not a big fan of additional books that focus on minor characters or tie up loose ends that are not crucial to the main story. If a new book is needed to determine the whereabouts of Robb and Marcus, were Robb and Marcus needed at all? To each their own. I did enjoy the book and plan on reading more from Irene Radford in the future.

This book also marked my 40th read book in 2019, meeting the goal I set at the start of the year! I suspect I'll read another 3-5 books this year, so I'm thinking of pushing my 2020 goal to 45 books read. Too lofty? Challenge accepted!

Trip to Maine - Post #23: Wonderland Trail

Following our stop at the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, we continued along the road and stopped at a small parking lot on the side of the road and hiked along Wonderland Trail, to the water. This is a longer hike than the one at the lighthouse, but only 15-20 minutes to get to the water. The trail is easy and takes you through a wooded area (we saw a deer!) and then down to the beach and water.

We walked along the beach over to the flat rocks and spent some time exploring the cracks in the rocks, looked for critters in the pools of water. My kids, particularly my youngest, immediately went searching for small flat rocks to skip across the water. This has been a bit of a tradition for us, walking to the water and skipping rocks. You get a small amount of enjoyment when you can achieve 5+ skips! 

This is another place you can head for a nice picnic. Plenty of places to spread out a blanket and enjoy some good picnic food at the water's edge, listening to to the waves crash against the rocks. You'll likely share the beach and rocks with a handful of others, but nothing like the hordes of people at the beach or any of the other attractions along the park look road on the other side of the park. 

Trip to Maine - Post #22: Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse

All vacations come to an end, unfortunately, as did our trip to Maine this summer. Our last full day in Maine took us to the other side of Acadia National Park, the side that doesn't include the much busier park loop road. On the south end of the park on this side is a quaint lighthouse, Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.

Parking here is tight, but if you wait a few moments, someone will likely leave, freeing up a spot for you to park. It's a very short walk down to the cliff edge and light house on the one side. Take a few pictures, watch the waves, and then head for a still short, but slightly longer walk along the trail on the other side of the light house. This trail will take you down to the rocks, from which you can enjoy a picnic lunch or climb down to the water's edge. My youngest daughter climbed down with me and we watched the waves flow over the rocks. Mesmerizing!

The more popular attractions in Acadia National Park are along the park loop road, but I recommend you take a day and explore the other side of the island. It's not as busy, traffic is lighter, and there are many cool sites to see!

Power Plays! Newsletter

I've come to enjoy a few daily/weekly newsletters from independent reporters on specific topics that are too often under-covered by major media outlets. I wrote about one of these, HEATED by Emily Atkin, a couple of months ago. HEATED is currently free and published by Atkin four times per week, but moves to a pay-for model in December 2019. HEATED will still be delivered once per week for free, but to gain full access you need to pay. This makes sense as Atkin can't do this for free! HEATED is very well written, completely focused on climate change, and a newsletter that I have no qualms paying for. It's important we support quality journalism!

A new newsletter that I have really enjoyed is Power Plays! by Lindsay Gibbs. Power Plays! focuses on gender quality, and the lack of it, in sports. I joined with the first issue and am very impressed with the work Gibbs has put in to highlight how far too often women's sports and women in sports are not at all treated equally with men's sports and men in sports. Currently Gibbs publishes three times per week and I look forward to each of her issues. Power Plays! will remain free for now, but similar to HEATED, will move to a pay-for model in the near future.

I highly encourage you to check out Power Plays! There is no doubt you will learn something and be angry that women are still treated as inferior to men in sports in 2019.

This Blog's History: Peeps!

It's Friday, meaning it's time for another edition of This Friday in This Blog's History. This week I take you way back to 2014 and a few experiments we did in our house with peeps. Yes, those disgusting marshmallow things shaped like baby chickens. Bleh! They may be disgusting to eat, but you can do some cool science with them! The link below will take you to our peep experiments from 5+ years ago.

Science Experiments with Peeps

Numlock Newsletter

As major cuts continue at major media outlets and news outlets across the country, there are an increasing number of small, independent news outlets and individual newsletters starting up. Many of the newsletters have a specific focus, covering topics that are almost never covered by the major news outlets. HEATED, a newsletter by Emily Atkin that focuses entirely on climate change, is a great example of the high quality journalism found in many newsletters. PowerPlays! by Lindsay Gibbs, which I'll write about in the near future, focuses on the lack of gender equality in sports, and is another excellent source of high quality journalism.

Another newsletter I encourage you to check out, especially if numbers are your thing, is Numlock by Walt Hickey. It's a free newsletter that publishes several times per week. Each edition has several short snippets pulled from other news sources that pulls out the numbers in the original article. I'm a big lover of numbers so I really enjoying reading each issue. The snippets range from numbers pulled from sports, dollar amounts pulled from movie earnings, numbers pulled from population statistics, etc.

If numbers are your thing, check out Numlock. It's free to subscribe and you can cancel at any time. There's no negative to subscribing and checking it out! If you really love it, you can contribute a monthly or annual fee and receive at least one subscriber only issue each week. I'm not a subscriber at this time. I only have so much money to go around so can't pay for everything, so for now I'm sticking with the free issues in my email inbox.

Trip to Maine - Post #21: Pirate's Cove Mini Golf

Our last full day in Maine took us back to Acadia National Park for more exploring. On the way there, at the request of our 9 year old, we stopped at Pirate's Cove Mini Golf. It's a bit more expensive to mini golf here than most places, but this is a high quality mini golf course. You get what you pay for and by paying more, you get a very fun mini golf experience. There are two different courses. You can play both for a discount, comparing to paying for each separately. We played both and had a great time

Each hole is pirate themed with a placard explaining the story of a few famous pirates. This course was a great break from hiking, driving, and exploring the park. Not that there is anything wrong with those things, but when you have kids and see a cool looking mini golf course, it's hard to say no. :-) My recommendation is to hit the course early in the morning when they open. Otherwise it is likely to get busy with waits at each hole as you wait for the group ahead of you. We arrived early, but by the time we finished there were many more people on the course, including waits. Not long waits, mind you, but you will have to a wait a bit.

Oh, and don't forget to fire the cannon at the start of your round!

What Is #28: An Open Cluster?

Last week in this on-going "What Is" series, I took a look at globular clusters, which foreshadowed into open clusters. If globular clusters are old, up to a million star clusters, what are open clusters? In many ways, open clusters are the exact opposite of globular clusters, although they share the characteristic of being filled with stars that are all gravitationally bound to each other.

Pleiades by Juan lacruz 

Open clusters are star clusters that are typically very young at a few hundred million years or less. As a result they contain larger, brighter, and bluer stars and often still contain gas and dust. The image above is a great example of an open cluster. The Pleiades has several very bright, blueish stars and is visible to the naked eye.

Open clusters are typically smaller than some globular clusters but also contain far fewer stars at only a 1000 or so. If you are a star in this cluster, your night sky likely contains many of these bright blue stars. It's very possible there will be more stars in your night sky in an open cluster than a globular cluster given the old age of the dim stars in a globular cluster.

Since open clusters are young, they did not form in the halo of our galaxy, which lacks the gas to form new stars. Instead, these clusters formed in the disk of our galaxy, where the Sun resides, because there is still plenty of gas and dust to form new stars. The Sun, however, is not part of an open cluster. The Sun sits by itself, outside of any clusters.

What Is #27: A Globular Cluster?

It has been several weeks since I've added to this "What Is" series, so I thought it would be worthwhile to get back to it as there are definitely more than twenty six astronomical things/objects that are important to know. For the twenty-seventh post in this series, I take a look at globular clusters. Any amateur astronomer who has looked at the night sky is likely familiar with globular clusters, also referred to as closed clusters, but what are they?

Globular Cluster M3 - The sky image is obtained by Sloan Digital Sky Survey, DR14 with SciServer.

Globular clusters are clusters of stars in which all stars are gravitationally bound to each other. These are typically older stars that formed as the Milky Way Galaxy was in its early stages, approximately 9 to 10 billion years ago and possibly longer. They exist in the halo of the galaxy, the spherical region of our galaxy that surrounds the disk and center.

Since these stars are old, they are smaller, redder, and dimmer. The larger, bluer, and brighter stars died off long ago. Globular clusters can have up to a million stars packed into a region only a few tens to a couple of hundred light years across. That is a lot of stars in a small space! For reference, the closest star to us (not in a globular cluster) is 4 light years away. In a globular cluster it is a guarantee there'd be stars closer than four light years. Your night sky, however, would not necessarily be filled with more stars than we see in our current sky. The stars we see in the night sky are larger and brighter stars. There'd be stars in the sky, no doubt, but because all of the stars in a globular cluster are dimmer, only the closest would be visible to the naked eye. A dim star only 4 light years away is barely visible to the naked eye in our own region.

There are around 150 known globular clusters in our galaxy, but many more in other galaxies. They are great stars to study if you are looking at studying old stars. If globular clusters are also called closed clusters, then what are open clusters? These will be discussed in the next post in this series. 

This Blog's History: Maine State Museum

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to a post I wrote detailing our visit to the Maine State Museum in July 2019. This museum is a must-see stop if you are a history buff traveling through Maine. It's filled with local Maine history!

Maine State Museum

Trip to Maine - Post #20: Bar Harbor

The loop road through Acadia National Park is a beautiful drive that offers many spots to stop for taking in the amazing scenery. If you need a break from the outdoors, take a drive down to Bar Harbor. Here you will find shops, restaurants, coffee, adult beverages, etc. We didn't spend much time in Bar Harbor as we spent most of our day driving along the loop road and checking out the cool sites. But after a long day of driving around and doing a bit of hiking, we were tired and needed some coffee. There are several coffee shops in Bar Harbor and the one we chose was The Independent. Very good coffee!

There were several delicious looking seafood restaurants and we of course stopped at one of them, The Bar Harbor Lobster Company. It was very good! Delicious lobster ragoons. Once again I spent far too much money on food, but it was soooooo good!!!

If you do go into Bar Harbor, be prepared for busy streets and tight parking. You'll eventually find a place to park, but you may have to walk a few blocks, but that allows you to check out more of the shops.

Trip to Maine - Post #19: Thunder Hole

While driving along the loop road in Acadia National Park, one of the popular spots to stop is Thunder Hole. Along the way you'll first hit (it's a one way road) a turn off for a beach. Thunder Hole is farther up the road. If it is your intention to hit the beach first, make sure you turn off. It's a one way road, so if you miss the beach you have to walk back or take a long car ride all the way around.

On the way to Thunder Hole it's quite likely you'll see parking all along the road. You can stop along the road and walk to Thunder Hole, but there is a parking lot just across from Thunder Hole. The walk is a nice walk along the road and there are many turn off points to walk along the rocks by the shore line. So a longer walk is not necessarily a bad thing.

Thunder Hole is a small 'cove' in which the water comes rushing in and can make a thundering sound. Unfortunately there was no thundering when we arrived. It is best to visit Thunder Hole about 2 hrs before high tide, which was far off from our visit. Even then, the conditions have to be right to get the large waves splashing up with the thunder. But don't worry, even if you don't get the big thunder, the area is very beautiful and well worth a walk of a few minutes. 

Transit of Mercury

Yesterday Mercury transited the Sun, starting at about 7:30 AM eastern standard time and continuing for several hours. I was all set to take my morning astronomy class outside to observe through the telescope and solar filter. Alas, it was not to be. The skies were 100% overcast with light rain turning to snow. Boo!!!! We did a quick look online to see it, but not the same thing as seeing it directly.

So what is a transit of Mercury? A transit of Mercury takes place when Mercury is directly in line between the Sun and Earth. Since the Sun is much bigger, Mercury only blocks out a tiny bit of the Sun's light, but with a telescope and proper eye protection you can see a small dark circle move across the disk of the Sun. This is a rare event as most of the time Mercury or Earth are inclined a bit in their orbits and therefore both do not line up directly with the Sun at the same time.

Transit of Mercury on November 8, 2006 by Brocken Inaglory

If you missed yesterday's transit, as I did, you have to wait 13 years until November 13, 2032. But this transit is not observable from the United States. The next transit after this is November 7, 2039, but this one is also not observable from the United States. You have to go to the next transit on May 7, 2049 to see a transit of Mercury from the United States!!! I intend to make it to that one, but I'll be much older. :-) 

A transit of Mercury is not as spectacular as a total solar eclipse, but it is a more rare event. There are far more total solar eclipses observable from somewhere on Earth than there are transit of Mercury.

Catastrophe Podcast

Admit it. You are not listening to enough podcasts. So let me help you out. A recent, science-themed, podcast you should listen to is the Catastrophe Podcast. The podcast is hosted by Jess Phoenix (side note: she ran for Congress in 2018!) and focuses on natural disasters. A very cool, unique podcast, that will fill you in on all the details you could ever need on natural disasters.

You can get more information and updates by following the podcast's Twitter feed https://twitter.com/CatastrophePod. I also highly recommend you follow https://twitter.com/jessphoenix2018. Follow both and you'll get a daily dose of quality science.

This Day in This Blog's History: Happy Halloween

In case you missed it the other week, today, for This Day in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrong about Halloween. It's worth the read, but then again, I'm a bit biased. And yes, I did dress up as a cow again this year. That cow costume is the best $19.99 I spent close to 15 years ago in grad school. :-)

Happy Halloween

Trip to Maine - Post #18: Sieur de Monts Spring

While driving along the main loop road in Acadia National Park, be sure to stop at Sieur de Monts Spring. There's a visitor's cabin, restrooms, and more importantly, some beautiful nature to stop and observe. There are several quality trails you can take for a bit of fresh air and exercise. We took one labeled 'strenuous' that had some elevation changes. Going up was a bit strenuous, but the hike up was worth it. There are several cool rock formations, plus at the top there are several spots for wonderful views of the surrounding landscape.

Stock photo...sorry. :-)

There are many areas to stop along the loop road. Sieur de Monts Spring doesn't get the same type of traffic as Cadillac Mountain or Thunder Hole, but it is well worth the stop. Very close to the spring is Wild Garden of Acadia, a great place to see some local plant life.

Dinosaur Humor

Today feels like a day for a bit of humor, dinosaur humor! I found this the other day posted on the March for Science facebook page.

If I have to explain it, it is no longer funny.

Found it Dinosaur Humor.

Trip to Maine - Post #17: Acadia National Park

The second leg of our family vacation to Maine this past summer took us to Acadia National Park where we spent two full days exploring and sightseeing. Acadia is absolutely amazing and should be a definite must-see on your bucket list. There is so much to see and do while in Acadia regardless of your physical ability. The main loop drive is lovely, although it can get very busy. My recommendation is to visit during the week, if at all possible, if you are visiting in the summer. This will cut down on some of the traffic. Thankfully we did this and although there were a lot of people in the park, it wasn't unbearable by any means. The park does run into huge traffic problems during peak season on the weekends. There's an exhibit in the main entrance visitor's center that talks about the traffic problems.

I highly recommend you take a drive or hike to the top of Cadillac Mountain. The views are beautiful! We drove to the top. There's a paved road and parking lot, but my recommendation is to get to the park early and head to Cadillac Mountain first before the crowds arrive. Parking is tight at the top and they close the road down if there is no parking available, creating long waits at the bottom of the mountain. We arrived around 8:30 AM and the parking lot was close to three-fourths full. So we found a spot, but it was starting to get tight. There's nice path around the summit of the mountain for you to view the entire landscape.

There are bathrooms and a gift shop at the top and if you collect stamps for your National Park Book, make sure to get your stamp at the gift shop!

There are really two sides to Acadia. The side with the loop road is by far the busiest, but I highly encourage you to take a day and visit the other side. There are some cool light houses and rock formation features that you don't want to miss!

Nothing beats views from Cadillac Mountain to start your day in Acadia National Park!

Left Alive #2 - Book Review

I'm closing in on my reading goal for 2019. I set a goal of 40 books read by the end of 2019 and I'm now sitting at 39. Just one more to go!!! My latest book read was Left Alive #2, which continues the story of a zombie apocalypse. Yep, I enjoy zombie books. As I stated in my review of the first book in the series, I was hoping the second book would be better. The first book was a bit dry and only focused on a single character.

Thankfully, it was a better book. The main character meets up with a second character and the two of them work together, with plenty of arguments, to navigate the U.S. as they trek toward Florida. Along the way they run across zombies, as well as other humans who are not so interested in being nice to others. Your typical zombie apocalypse story, but a quick read that satisfies my need of reading about zombies every now and then. :-)

This Blog's History: Niagra Cave

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to a post I wrote on our recent visit to Niagra Cave in southeast Minnesota. If I wasn't clear in that post, caves are cool and you should visit a few of them! For more details on our visit to this cave, please click the link below to take you back to the original post I wrote.

Niagra Cave