This Blog's History: Great Women of Science Glass

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to the post I wrote on the very cool Christmas gift my kids gave me...a Great Women of Science glass!

Great Women of Science Glass

The Guns of Avalon (The Chronicles of Amber #2) - Book Review

I'm in good shape for my 2020 reading goal. Well on target to read 45 books this year. My latest read was The Guns of Avalon (The Chronicles of Amber #2) by Roger Zelazny. This is the continuation of the story of Prince Corwin fighting to reclaim the throne of Amber, a throne that is currently held by one of his brothers. Magic, war, conflict, mystery...this book has it all! I highly recommend if you enjoy books in the fantasy genre.

This book has over 8,000 five star review on Goodreads, so there are plenty of others who think this is a great book.

Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site

Last month, January 2020, on MLK Day, we took a trip over to the Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site in Fountain City, Indiana. Admission is normally $10/adult and $8/child, but on MLK day admission was free for everyone! Not that admission should stop you from visiting this historic site. It's a great look at how the underground railroad operated in the first half of the 19th century up to the end of the Civil War.

There's a small exhibit room upstairs with a ton of information on slavery and the underground railroad. We had a tough time explaining to are youngest daughter that the underground railroad was a movement to help slaves from the south reach freedom. It wasn't an actual underground railroad with train cars!

My picture of the Levi and Catharine Coffin House.

In addition to the exhibit room, admission gets you a full tour of the actual house Levi and Catharine coffin lived in and used to help slaves reach their freedom. An excellent tour led by very knowledgeable staff. A visit here is an eye opener on the life slaves lived and the extraordinary steps they took to be free. This is a definite must visit for anyone with kids. We take freedom for granted, but there was no freedom slaves in the 19th century U.S.

Plastic Bag Carbon Footprint

There's a big movement to use less plastic in our daily lives. There are several cities in the U.S. and across the world that have banned plastic bags at grocery stores and department stores. Other cities and localities allow plastic bags, but it may be a requirement to charge for them. This may cut down on the use of plastic in these areas, but is this really a net positive for the environment? That question is not as easy to answer. The Skeptoid podcast recently covered this and it was a really interesting podcast on how reusable bags may not be as environmentally friendly as we think.

Skeptoid - The Trashy Secret of Plastic Bag Bans

The podcast isn't advocating for the constant use of single use plastics, but it does shed some light on how complicated this subject is in reality. Solutions are not always easy. I encourage you to take a listen to this episode (link above). It's not long, just 17 minutes in length, but packed with interesting science!

End of the Spitzer Space Telescope

The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), a telescope designed to observe infrared wavelengths, was launched in the middle of my grad school career in 2003. It is easily described as one of the great space telescopes in the history of astronomical observations. Earth's atmosphere blocks most infrared light from reaching the surface, so to truly understand objects emitting infrared light, we needed a space based telescope to remove the effects of Earth's atmosphere. The SST accomplished that.

Artist's conception of the SST. NASA/JPL-Caltech [Public domain]

The SST had a limited lifetime because it required a supply of liquid helium to keep the instruments cooled to a level that infrared light observed was not coming from the telescope itself. This supply ran out in 2009 and many of the instruments were no longer operationally although a couple were, allowing the SST to continue to deliver great science.

The SST took images of galaxies, providing new information to further understand these objects. It gave us more information on the spread of infrared radiation in space. In addition, it helped discover new exoplanets.

Although the SST was still operational after its helium supply was exhausted, it still had a limited lifetime based on the ability of a battery to have power to continue sending signals back to Earth. Due to limited power, it was only sending data back for a short period of time each day. On January 20, 2020, astronomers ended the SST mission by sending a shut off signal.

A truly fantastic telescope that was decades in the making that once finally in space, drastically increased our knowledge of the cosmos.

This Blog's History: Hunt a Killer

In case you missed it the first time, for This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrote detailing our experience as a family playing the episode based game Hunt a Killer. A very fun, challenging, and thought provoking game. Check out more of the details at the link below.

Hunt a Killer

What is #36: Ganymede?

Today is the 36th edition of this blog's What Is series, a series that takes a deeper look at individual objects or concepts in the field of astronomy. The last three editions in this series took a look at three of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter: Europa, Io, and Callisto. That leaves Ganymede left.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Public domain]

Ganymede is the largest of the four Galilean moons and the largest moon in the Solar System. Ganymede is larger than both Mercury and Pluto. Pluto is not classified as a planet (it's a dwarf planet), but Mercury is, so Ganymede is larger than one of the official planets in the Solar System. If Ganymede orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter, it would be called a planet!

Ganymede is similar to Callisto in composition. It's a rocky moon with several impact craters, as seen in the image above, but also containing much ice below the surface. The bright regions in the image are craters that shows ice underneath the top layer of the surface. Given the quantities of water ice, it might be an option for human habitation centuries down the road.

That does it for the Galilean moons. Jupiter has 60+ other moons, but don't worry, I'm not going to do an edition in this series in each of them. Well, if I run out of ideas I could, but astronomy is so fascinating that I can't imagine running out of ideas!

Goat Calendar

I have two offices at work. One has a 2020 Women of Science calendar and the other has a daily calendar, but I also like having a 12 month calendar on the wall, so for my second office I decided to have a bit of fun and throw some humor into. So I got a goat calendar. Yes, a goat calendar!

My 2020 Goat Calendar!

Because who doesn't love a goat calendar?!?!?! A new goat staring at me each month for 12 months. LOL!

Eiteljorg Museum

A couple of weeks ago we found ourselves in Indianapolis, Indiana with some time to kill and decided to visit the Eiteljorg Museum. We had never visited here before so it was a great opportunity to learn more about the native peoples in North America. From the website, the museum:

"The Eiteljorg tells the stories of the peoples of North America in all their diversity and complexity. It’s a place for historical context, artistic expression, new ideas and individual perspectives. Here, visitors immerse themselves in the diverse cultures of the West and Native America, and sharing these amazing American stories is what we do at the Eiteljorg."

 

We had a great visit. I particularly enjoyed the art. My kids had the most fun touring the temporary train exhibit. There were toy trains moving on tracks around different U.S. landmarks. It was very impressive, as were all the exhibits.

 

Admission to this museum is very reasonable. It was $46 dollars for two adults and two kids (and your parking is validated, costing $0), although on the day we were there, they were having a membership special. Buy a family membership for $45 that gets you free admission for a year. Um, a no-brainer of a decision! Plus this membership gets you into other museums at a free or reduced rate. So even if the membership deal is not on special, it has the chance to be a great deal.

 

Definitely check out the Eiteljorg Museum in downtown Indianapolis! A very educational and fun visit for you and your kids.

Incorrect Science "Fact"

I have a daily science fact calendar sitting on my desk at work, and I was shocked the other day to rip off the previous day's fact and see this:

Took this picture because I was shocked at what I read!

Do you see the error? The error is the part of the paragraph that says the Moon formed from an impact 100 million years ago! The leading scientific theory on the formation of the Moon is the impact of a Mars sized object very early on after the Solar System formed. But 100 million years ago is very recent in the Solar System. The Solar System is 4.6 billion years old with the Moon forming by 4.5 billion years ago.

If this science "fact" was correct, dinosaurs saw no moon in the sky!!! That's ridiculous! This means dinosaurs, that went extinct from the impact of a 5-10 mile wide object 65 million years ago, survived the impact of a Mars sized object 100 millions years ago. LOL! If they couldn't survive the impact of a 5-10 mile wide object, they certainly didn't survive an impact with a Mars sized object.

Is this daily science fact calendar intentionally misleading readers? No, I don't think so. I think it is a poorly worded sentence that meant to say the Moon was formed 100 million years after the Solar System formed. This is in the ballpark of when scientists think a large impact formed our Moon. Unfortunately it was worded such that it states the Moon formed just 100 million years ago.

This Blog's History: Cadillac Palace Theatre Chicago

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to a post I wrote detailing our experiences at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago. We were there in December 2019 to see Phantom of the Opera. A wonderful experience!

Cadillac Palace Theatre Chicago

What is #35: Callisto?

Recently in this 'What Is' series I've written about two of Jupiter's four large moons: Europa and Io. These are the four large moons, four of the largest moons in the Solar System, that Galileo discovered when he first observed Jupiter with a telescope. Thus they are called the four Galilean moons. Since I've talked about two of them already, I might as well talk about the other two: Callisto and Ganymede. Let's start with Callisto.

Chain of craters on Callisto - NASA [Public domain]

Callisto is much different from Io (very volcanic) and Europa (very icy with a liquid ocean underneath the surface). Callisto has no volcanoes. Callisto has a lot of ice, evidenced by the bright spots we see in craters. There is the possibility of a liquid ocean underneath the surface, but it doesn't get the same interest as Europa on this matter. Callisto looks more like our Moon, with a grayish surface pot-marked by craters.

Callisto is the third largest moon in the Solar System and second largest orbiting Jupiter. Only Ganymede (Jupiter) and Titan (Saturn) are larger moons.

Callisto fits in a weird spot in most mentioned moons. There is the possibility of life if there is liquid water and it could be an ideal place for possible habitation in the future. Yet Callisto doesn't get talked about nearly to the same level as Europa and Io and it's not the largest moon. It's large, but third place just doesn't cut it. Poor Callisto. :-)

It's a Good Life - Book Review

I'm off to a good start on my journey to read 45 books this year. Among those will be a couple of short science fiction stories, but the shorter books I read are offset by the mammoth 1,000 page tombs, such as Outlander, that take me weeks to read. :-) The most recent book I read was a short science fiction story titled "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby.

It's a Good Life tells the story of a young child who has be ability to change the world by thinking. Whatever he thinks becomes reality and the world is suddenly different. Unfortunately the young child can think people he doesn't like out of existence! Yikes! Thus the family and people of the town do everything they can to be in the child's good graces at all times. And when they aren't, disaster happens.

An interesting short story in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame book I'm reading. I have several science fiction anthologies and there are many interesting stories in these I would never have discovered had I not picked up a couple of these anthologies at the local used book store. The power of used book stores!

Drilled Podcast

It's been awhile since I've shared a podcast on this blog so it is time to remedy that! I'm a podcast lover. I listen to far more podcasts than I have time for, which means I fall behind or have to pick and choose which episodes to listen to. Yet I just can't stop adding a new podcast to my list when I find something new and exciting. One of the more recent podcasts I discovered is titled "Drilled".

Drilled Podcast

There are more podcasts devoted to climate change out there now than there were 5 years ago, which is a great thing! Drilled is one of those, and focuses on what their website describes as "investigates the propaganda campaign of the century — the creation of climate denial."

I really encourage you to give it a listen. Climate change is real and it is critical we as society step up and do something immediately, yet we have a government in the U.S. that denies the facts of climate change. Not only do they deny that we should do something about it, they deny it is even happening! For the future of our children and the future of this planet, we need to focus on climate change, what I and many argue is the greatest threat on the globe today.

Anyways, listen to Drilled, you will not be disappointed!

It's Science Fair Time

The first couple of months of the year are science fair time and 2020 was no different than the last several years with my kids. Although my 7th grader did not participate in a science fair project this year (she was swamped with other activities, including soccer, jazz band, honor band, and Girl Scouts), my fourth grader participated in her second science fair. Last year she tested the strength of various types of tape on different surfaces. This year she wanted to see how much bacteria is left on your hands after various washing methods.

We picked up some agar filled petri dishes and she set about swabbing her hands and transferring bacteria to the dishes and then allowing it to grow for 96 hours. She swabbed dirty hands as a control, hands washed only with water, hands washed with bar soap, hands washed with liquid soap, and hands washed with hand sanitizer. The results were very interesting and petri dishes of growing bacteria are always cool.

My daughter's picture of a petri dish of bacteria from swabbing hands after cleaning them with bar soap and waiting 96 hours for growth.

My daughter's picture above shows the growth after 96 hours of bacteria swabbed from hands just cleaned with bar soap. Clearly bacteria still remains. My daughter did some background research on good versus bad bacteria and overall it was a fantastic learning experience for her.

Her efforts paid off as she won first place among fourth graders and was in the top 3 of projects of all elementary school grades, winning small telescope as a reward. She moves on to the regional science fair in a couple of weeks. Yes, I'm biased and super proud of her! :-)

Science fairs are a great way to expose children to the scientific process and have fun. I am so thankful our school chooses to participate and give kids an opportunity to fully immerse themselves in science. The night of the science fair showcase is combined with a much larger STEAM night with people filling the halls of the school to participate in STEM plus Art activities!

This Blog's History: Europa

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to a post I wrote on Europa, a very cool moon in our Solar System that could potential harbor life given its ocean of liquid water underneath an icy surface. Yes, definitely a cool moon! For more details, click the link below to read the original post.

What is Europa?

Great Women of Science Glass

Yesterday I shared a picture I took of the Women of Science 2020 calendar I purchased for my office at work. I mentioned the Great Women of Science glass my daughters found and got me for Christmas. Here's a picture of that glass.

Photo I took of the awesome Great Women of Science glass my daughters got me for Christmas!

 I've used this glass and can state that beverages taste delicious out of it!

Women of Science Calendar

For Christmas my kids found a Women in Science glass that I was thrilled to receive from them. One of them saw it in a store when I wasn't out with them and they immediately knew it was a perfect gift for me. After Christmas I needed a couple of calendars for my offices and home. One of the calendars I picked up was a corresponding Women in Science 2020 calendar by Rachel Ignotofsky. Each month is represented by a prominent woman in the history of science.

 

 

A photo I took of the last four months of 2019.

If you want one of these, it isn't too late. It may be February, but there are still 11 months to go. Here's one place where you can pick it up online, but there are, of course, many more buying options.

Women of Science 2020 Calendar

What is #34: Io?

The last post in this What Is series took a look at Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter that has an ocean of liquid water underneath its icy surface. Today we look at Io, another moon orbiting Jupiter. Io is a very large moon that is the third largest of the Galilean moons. These are the four large moons that Galileo discovered orbiting Jupiter when he viewed Jupiter with a telescope. Io is larger than Europa and a bit larger than our own moon.

NASA / JPL / University of Arizona [Public domain]

Io is very, very different from Europa. Io is not covered in ice like Europa. Io is very volcanic. In fact, it is the most volcanically active object in the entire Solar System! This is seen in the image above. The varied colors and constantly changing atmosphere are evidence of Io's very active surface. We've even seen active plumes in real time extending from the surface of Io, as seen in the image below.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft [Public domain]

Why is Io so active? Although a large moon, an object this size is expected to be geologically dead, as our Moon is no longer geologically active. Io's proximity to Jupiter, however, creates strong tidal forces that heat its interior, resulting in a moon that is still active and very active at that!

When it comes to moon's in the Solar System, Io, despite the lack of a water, is very, very interesting!

Black Mirror - Conclusion

Last month I shared I started watching the TV series 'Black Mirror'. I couldn't stop watching and binge watched the episodes in just a couple of weeks, recently finishing the series until a new season, hopefully, is released. Note: I have not yet watched the separate movie episode 'Bandersnatch', but it is on my list to watch soon! I recently wrote about my thoughts on the beginning of the series. Clearly I liked it as I finished it off not much later.

Black Mirror is such a good series. I encourage all of my readers to watch it! I love that each episode is stand alone. They do not directly connect as in the story line of one episode is not directly linked to the next episode. Although I watched them all in order, you don't need to watch them in order. Each episode is its own story with a different set of characters.

The series focuses on how technology changes our lives and not for the better. It's a dark look at how we are controlled by our devices and how future technological advances will further our reliance on tech. It doesn't initially seem possible, but as you watch each episode you begin to conclude that yes, this could really happen! Take the very first episode, for example. This is the pig episode. You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you watch it. At first the episode seems very unrealistic. Surely this could never happen, right? But then I start thinking about society and how easily the masses are controlled by technology and the plot no longer seems unreasonable. Unlikely, maybe, but I'm not sure.

You'll know what I'm talking about when you watch it. Black Mirror is a disturbing look at the present and future of society, but a series that was impossible for me to stop watching. I'd finish one episode and immediately want to start a new episode. It look a lot of self-control to avoid taking a sick day from work and binge watching all day. :-)