Going Deep

SLUGFEST: Monday evening, as the Major League Baseball all stars were taking the field for the annual celebration of the best of the best (supposedly), we trotted up to the local park to hold our own home run derby. There was extra spring in the kids' steps, as they knew they'd be competing for cash and prizes.


Earlier in the day, the kids and I had drawn up the rules for the competition. Each batter would get two warm up tosses, and then they'd get 10 pitches to hit. They'd be trying to hit as many home runs as possible and, of course, the farthest home run. Knowing they'd be competing against Rick and Kennedy, CJ and Annabelle were worried about their chances. I quelled those fears by telling them there would also be prizes for good sportsmanship, hustle and other things not necessarily tied to brute strength. :)


Rick when first and he hit 7 home runs. Kennedy went second and I think he hit 5, but he definitely got the tape measure home run award. Christian went next and he put on a respectable hitting display. Then it was CJ's turn. He hit more than he missed. 

Annabelle hit 4 or 5, almost all of them off her knuckles, and a few foul balls.

Then it was time for the league commissioner (that's me) to award the prizes. Christian was immediately ruled ineligible since he's married to the commissioner. He announced that he was going to sulk for the rest of the evening, LOL. Rick got to pick from the prize bag first since he had the most home runs. Ken was next, for his tape measure shot. Then CJ got the hustle award, for rounding up the most foul balls, and Annabelle got the fortitude award, for taking so many shots off her fingers. 


WEBINAR TIMES TWO: Monday we took part in two live seminars with NASA. The first one started at 8 a.m. and was all about life aboard the ISS. Steve Culivan from the Stennis Space Center hosted. The kids were fascinated to learn that astronauts on the ISS go to the bathroom while sitting on a vacuum. :0 They were also interested to hear the first food ever eaten in space was applesauce out of a toothpaste-like tube.

The second one started at 2 p.m. our time and was about air and spacecraft design. It was hosted by Alexis Harry from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.


One of the interesting factoids we learned by listening to Alexis  Harry was that the the Blackbird SR-71 stretch four feet wider/laterally when it's flying through the sky. It's so fast that it can make it from LA to NY in 30 minutes and if it shot a bullet forward, it would run fly right into it (faster than a speeding bullet - like Superman!) 


Alexis also covered the forces involved in airflight -(lift, gravity, thrust, and drag), as well as pitch and yaw. We learned about which 


Harry recommended NASA's "Courage to Soar" educator's guide. 

During the webinar, we constructed three airplanes. The ring wing glider (the circular one in the photo below) was quick to make and a lot of fun to fly. It really does glide! We also made a swept wing glider (that looks very much like a "standard" paper airplane). The most complicated craft by far was a straw plane. It had ailerons, elevators, a rudder, all of which could be adjusted to make the plane fly in different directions. Cool!  

Both webinar hosts are part of NASA's NASA aerospace education services project. 

And speaking of NASA, on Monday we watched NASA TV's special programming to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Telstar, which was the birth the age of satellite communication. 

Image: NASA

Telstar was the world's first commercial satellite. Two weeks after it launched (July 23, 1962),. Telstar relayed the first ever public, live trans-Atlantic TV signal, linking North America and Europe.