Moon Tunes & More

Altered (by me) moon image from MrMac04 via Morguefile

BLUE MOON:  The kids often start their days by reading news headlines on the Internet, and today, they each discovered that tonight's full moon would be a Blue Moon.  

I quickly told them that it didn't mean the moon would be blue.  In this instance, it refers to the third of four full moons in the season.  There are usually only three full moons in a season, so this one is a bonus. :)

After we talked about blue moons, of course I had to play the song for the kids.  Many have recorded it, but I went with The Marcels, vintage 1961 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7giOrKYIwpQ, the version that was featured in the classic movie "American Graffiti." 

And though we're nowhere near the Bluegrass State, I thought I should play Blue Moon of Kentucky for them, too. Oddly enough, there were a couple versions of Paul McCartney performing it.  We went with this one.

TWO IF BY SEA:   This afternoon, I turned "Animaniacs" on, as much for me as the kids. I love that cartoon, which premiered when Rick and Kennedy were kids, and today I was reminded why.  One of the shorts this afternoon was a mash up of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the "Noah's Ark" fable, called "Noah's Lark." It was so wonderfully strange and silly. Noah was played by a cartoon dude that was clearly modeled (for whatever bizarre reason) after comedian Richard Lewis. 

We all enjoyed the cartoon, but afterward skeptical CJ had some questions. For instance, "I don't believe it's the true story, but I do believe it has some inspiration from the Bible," he weighed in. 

"Do you know what makes me have suspicion about the story of Noah's ark from the Bible?" he continued. "How could there even possibly get two of each animal, one male and one female? There are thousands and thousands and thousands of species on Earth. Howe could he possibly get two of each of them on the ark?"

Noah's Ark'' by Edward Hicks.via Wikipedia

"Well, I suppose that would depend on how big the ark was," I conjectured. 

So then, our cartoon watching turned into a math problem. :)  Per the Bible, Noah's ark had three decks and internal compartments, and it measured 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

Naturally, our first order of business was finding out what the heck a cubit is. Turns out it's an archaic unit of measurement from the crook of the elbow to the tip of your middle finger. If you're CJ, that's 14 inches. 

So then, CJ calculated an ark based on his cubit.  It would be 350 feet long, by 252 feet.  As a basis for comparison, we looked up the measurements of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.  Those are 1092 feet long (three ark lengths per CJ's cubits), by 252 feet (four times wider than an ark per CJ's cubits).  

After calculating the length, width and height of it, CJ asked, "Can we try and get the volume of it? Length, times width, times height?"  Music to my ears! :)  

"Of course!" I enthused.  

The ark was supposedly 30 cubits high, or 35 feet per CJ cubits. So its overall volume was 714.175 cubic feet.  That's really not that enormous, and it seems implausible that two of every living creature could fit in such an area, I have to agree with CJ.

CJ had another problem with the ark story. "Second of all, some animals are only female," so how would it be possible to put one male and one female of each specimen?  "So, uh oh, in ancient time is there gender changing technology?" he wondered.

"Good point," I had to agree.

So all in all, a five-minute cartoon turned into a pretty interesting math, science, literaturem and more lesson.