Playing Catch Up

ALL ABOUT ALBERT: We continue to slog along in our Einstein/Theory of Relativity class. We've spent hours and hours watching lectures and taking assessment tests. Tomorrow, we should be ready to tackle this week's problems, and take this week's test. 

Perspectives, paradoxes, frames of reference, combining velocities, this is heady stuff. But we're holding our own, so far - able to get 100 percent on the post-lecture assessments. Fingers crossed we'll fare as well on the week's test. 

Annabelle's unique note-taking style (see above) continues to amuse.

FOUND: Two weeks to the day since Christian's car was stolen, the police called with news it had been found.

We're pretty sure it's been parked in the same place for nearly the entire 2 weeks, as it was recovered about 2 blocks down the road from where the thief used one of Christian's credit cards at a Rite Aid. (For those playing catch up, yes, Christian had left his wallet in the car. Don't try this at home.)

The kids and I went out with Kennedy to retrieve the car. However, when we got there, it wouldn't start, and even if it had, the dumb ass who stole it wrecked it, crunching the right front quarter panel, pushing it into the tire. (Which is probably why he or she only drove it as far as they did before parking it.) 

So, we left it there - after talking to the homeowner who had called it in to the police. He was very interested to hear the long and tangled story about how a stolen car wound up in his side yard parking strip in Wedgwood.

This afternoon, Christian caught a ride to the car from a coworker, and man-handled the bumper away from the tire. They gave it a jump-start and he drove it home.

FROM SCRATCH: CJ and Annabelle had Scratch class today. Here's one of CJ's creations (click the green flag to launch it). 

If the embedded link above doesn't work, check it out here:
http://beta.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10109261/
In addition to Scratch, Annabelle has also been playing around with a software tool called Pivot Stickfigure Animator. It's lots of fun, and she's able to make animated gif files, like this cowboy ...

BEANTOWN: Along with the rest of America, we've been following the events in and around Boston since the Marathon bombing, which occurred while we were enjoying the tulips on Monday. 

Terrorism, religious extremism, mass casualties, mob mentality - ugly subject matter to have to cover, but it's part of a real world social studies education. Of course, there have been lots of opportunities to talk about heroes, including the amazing account of a man whose legs were both blown off.   He was wheeled from the crime scene in a wheelchair, with a stranger in a cowboy hat holding/pinching one of the arteries left danging from his right leg. As soon as the victim awoke from surgery, he asked for a pad to write on and let everyone know he'd seen one of the bombers place the backpack. His description was instrumental, and it helped law enforcement isolate the suspects in videos from the scene. Amazing. 

We've also talked about crowdsourcing - how crime fighting via social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan and more is both a boon and a potential mess (for lack of a better term).   

STILL ON THE PAD: On Wednesday, we watched as Antares, the rocket Orbital Sciences Corp. hopes will eventually serve as a cargo ferry to the ISS, failed to take off due to an (electrical) umbilical cord detaching while the rocket was just 12 minutes from lift off. Bummer. It was set to go off today, but Mother Nature said 'no.' Tomorrow is another possibility. Saturday's launch is tentatively schedule for 2 p.m. Pacific time, with coverage on NASA TV starting at 1:30 our time. 

You can track updates here, on Spaceflight Now: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/antares/demo/status.html

While you're waiting, you can watch Antares roll out to the launch pad in this NASA video: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=153244401

MONDAY HEADS UP: Monday is Earth Day, and via an Education Express email, I learned about NASA's Digital Learning Network event, "Celebrate Our Beautiful Earth."

At 9 a.m. Pacific time, there will be a broadcast from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with a musical and visual tour of Earth from space with interactive discussions through the Beautiful Earth program. 

The program will feature musician Kenji Williams, who will narrate BELLA GAIA^®, or beautiful Earth, a multimedia show, and discuss his inspiration and why art and music are important in science. Williams will be joined by NASA's Dr. Claire Parkinson, project scientist of the Aqua satellite mission, which measures Earth's processes including temperatures, clouds, vegetation cover and water vapor. Dr. Parkinson will discuss climate change and how NASA is studying our home planet.

The public can participate by viewing the webcast on the DLiNfo Channel at http://dln.nasa.gov. During the event, an email address will be provided for participants to send questions.

For more information about the Beautiful Earth program, visit http://beautifulearth.gsfc.nasa.gov.

SOCIAL SIGN UP!: For anyone interested in all things NASA, you owe it to yourself to sign up for a chance to get a spot in a NASA Social at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Per NASA, lucky attendees will get to ...

• Speak with science researchers whose work is enabled by the International Space Station
• Ask questions of the space station program manager and the associate program scientist during a May 22 press conference about the upcoming Expedition 36 mission to the International Space Station
• Tour unique facilities, including:
• the Robonaut Laboratory
• the Mission Control Center
• the Astronaut Exercise Equipment Training Facility

Big fun! More info and a link to the registration page here: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/social/social_jsc_iss_april2013.html

Stalls and Stops

PLEASANT PAUSE: Sometimes getting stopped by a raised bridge is OK. Case in point: On our way to Shoreline this afternoon, a lift of the Fremont Bridge froze us in our tracks. We were near the front of the queue, and I told the kids they should pop out and check out what the hold up was. And so rather than grousing in the car, they got to enjoy some sunshine, a view of a majestic sailboat, and the picturesque Aurora Bridge. What a nice delay. :)

LIGHT READING: We're working through our Einstein class. Not easy material. We watched a couple of video lectures today with professor Larry Lagerstrom of Stanford, and we started reading one of Einstein's papers from his 'miracle year.'

My goodness Mr. Einstein uses big words. We have to stop a time or two every sentence to touch base and make sure everyone is understanding it.

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT: Last night we got a break from the blanket of clouds, and at 9:19 we were able to see a nice, long flyover of the ISS.  It was spectacular - the kids were jumping up and down on our roofdeck, waving at Cmdr. Chris Hadfield and crew.

While we waited for the ISS to appear, we found the Big Dipper and the North Star, and wondered what the three extra bright stars by the moon were. From EarthSky.org, today we learned they were Castor and Pollux, the Gemini Twins, above the moon.

Castor is actually SIX stars! It's comprised of three pair of binary stars, all revolving in an amazing dance around a common center of mass. How cool is that?!

    Graphic via EarthSky.org
The brightest star we could see was just below the moon. Turns out that is/was Procyon. Today, we learned it's a star in the Lesser Dog (Canis Minor). It's sometimes called the Little Dog Star.

But it's not so little. Turns out Procyon, 'only' 11.4 light years away, is 1.4 times larger than our sun, and its diameter is roughly two times that of our star. So very interesting.

SCRUBBED: We've had this date circled on our spaceflight calendar for awhile now, as it was supposed to be the launch date of Antares, a prototype rocket of Orbital Sciences Corp. Sometimes things don't go as scheduled. ...

Orbital is a competitor of SpaceX, looking to run ISS resupply missions for NASA. Today was supposed to be a demonstration mission - no ISS berthing and a simulated cargo.

      Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
One of the elements that made today's launch attempt super intriguing is that the engines strapped to the rocket are recycled. As in 40-years old from a defunct moon mission (N1) for the Soviet Union. Seriously. AeroJet dusted 'em off, brought 'em over, and strapped 'em on. (OK, so I'm sure it was a little more complicated than that but still, wild, no?)

Also making this launch different, it was from NASA's Wallops facility, on the east coast of Virginia, with waves from the Atlantic Ocean lapping right up alongside the pad. That was different! Launch time was supposed to be 2 p.m. our time, which is right between the kids' science and math classes in Shoreline today.

So, while the kids were working in teams in science, I quietly booted up the laptop and hopped on NASA TV in the back of the room. I wanted to have it good to go, so CeeJ and Bee could quickly watch the launch between classes. However, when I shared with the the science teacher that there was a live launch schedule for this afternoon, she immediately (bless her heart) pulled it up on her classroom computer and projected the pre-launch footage to the large screen.

The kids (not just mine!) immediately responded, asking, "Is that LIVE?!?!" :)
Nothing like a live rocket launch to capture the attention and imagination of a room full of kids!

The pre-launch shots scrolled in the background while the kids worked. At about 1:48, the teacher brought the audio on the broadcast up. At that very instant, three words came crackling out of the speakers. "Abort! Abort! Abort!"

The teacher and I looked at each other, and I said, "That's not what you want to hear. You want to hear 'nominal!' "  I also told the class that in rocket launch speak  'abort' means something went wrong, and no rocket would be launched today. BUMMER!

It quickly became apparent that the scrub was due to an umbilical connection prematurely separating from Antares' upper stage. That's not good. The next attempt will be no earlier than Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Stay tuned.

FRESH AIR: When we got home, the kids asked to play outside. The answer to that is ALWAYS "Yes."

I love eavesdropping on their elaborate, fantastical games. Today's involved something about city crushing robots and such. Time well spent.

Wall-y

TEAR DOWN THE WALL: Not sure what you did before breakfast this morning, but CJ was busy with a life-imitates-art project centering on Pink Floyd's "The Wall."

He sat at the breakfast table eating cereal, "The Wall" streaming into his head via ear buds, playing Minecraft. But it wasn't any random exercise. Rather, I noticed one of the things he was constructing was an enormous brick wall ("all in all you're just another brick in the wall").

He spent the first 25 tracks of the album building up his Floydian Minecraft world and then when "The Trial" came on, with its refrain of "Tear down the wall! Tear down the wall!" he did just that, destroying what he'd worked to create.

Fun way to start the day, I'd say.

AFTERWORD: We finally watched the video with parting thoughts from Lou Broomfield, "our" physics professor. In it, he asked students to send him a postcard, so today the kids each picked one out.

I think I'm also going to put the postcards in an envelope along with a thank you from me, and send the prof a page or two of the kids' notes. I think a guy who usually teaches classes of 20+ somethings at the University of Virginia would get a kick out of seeing how 8- and 10-year olds process his physics lessons.

PLOTTING: We are finally getting to the Week 2 lectures in our Einstein class. Last week was basically biographical material, but things are starting to get complicated rather quickly. We're plotting in three dimensions and noodling over how to synchronize clocks. I hope we can keep up.

As we were learning about spacetime diagramming today, out of nowhere Annabelle said, "I have an idea for a Scratch project!" (Scratch being a programming platform.) I can't believe how quickly she came up with it!

You have to click on the green flag to launch the program.


If you click on the "see inside" button when you're on the page (here: http://beta.scratch.mit.edu/projects/10112530/) you can see all of the steps she had to connect in order for it to work.

OUTSIDE THE BOX: The sun came out this afternoon and the kids spent two-plus hours out in it. As infrequent as it appears, when it's here, we tend to blank out the schedule and get out in it.

Annabelle was very excited to discover a caterpillar hanging out on a bubble wand. Rosy cheeked, she ran into the house to fetch me to come see it.  My photo of it didn't turn out - sorry. I can report that it looked very much like a caterpillar.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

SKAGIT SCENERY: We took a field trip today - with the "field" being acres and acres of tulips. 

For years I've known April is the height of tulip season for the many Washington state tulip growers, yet I've never managed to get out to the fields and take it all in. Today, we changed that!

Mount Vernon, a little more than an hour to our north, is a hub of tulip growing. In fact, if you point your Web browser to www.tulips.com, you get the online home of our destination today, RoozenGaarde 

RoozenGaarde is a division of Washington Bulb Company Inc., the largest bulb grower in North America. According to their Web site, they have 1000 acres of fields in the Skagit Valley.  The company is owned by the Roozen family, which has been growing flowers in Holland and the U.S. since the early 1700s. 

There are tulip farms all over the valley, but we zeroed in on RoozenGaarde's 3.5 acre display garden planted with over a quarter million bulbs. There was a stunning array of tulips to ogle, from traditional, 'cup' shaped ones above to spiky, multi-colored pretties (Greigii), like the ones below.   

These fringed Fabios were fabulous!

Some of the blossoms were petite, while others were a faceful when you stopped to smell them.

These Queensland tulips were like furry pink peonies. 

Some of the tulips were just past their prime (off with their heads!) ... 

and others had yet to start their show. ... 

But most of the flowers were at their peak of perfection.

There was a little labyrinth to explore.

The kids had no trouble finding their way to the center.

We also found tulips in a few funny places. ...

We admired tulip-surrounded topiary ...

and appreciated the patterns in the plantings, like this garden, where a stream of hyacinths winds through the taller tulips.

You knew we were going to stop to admire a tulip named after our city! It's pointy, like the Space Needle.

This crimson beauty commanded attention. Her name is Valery Gergiev.

I really loved these Salmon Parrot tulips, so named because the petals resemble the ruffled wings of a parrot.

 

Of course, a couple of non-tulipy things around the farm caught my eye. I liked the past-their prime daffodils drooping in front of rusty old farm equipment.

 And the weathered fence nicely framed some red heads.

42: Saturday afternoon we enjoyed a moving history lesson in the form of a major motion picture about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball. The movie "42" had gotten great reviews, and it was certainly 8 thumbs up from the four of us. Highly recommended. 

Last week, the Library of Congress was nice enough to send me an email full of resources related to Robinson. We'll be using those in the days/weeks to come.

BAD NEWS: As we were strolling around the fields of flowers this afternoon, I began to hear snippets of others' conversations around us. Something about terrorism. A bomb. Closing bridges. An explosion at the finish line. "Something really bad has happened," I said to Christian, who whipped out his phone, got on the Internet, and learned of the bombing in Boston.

When we stopped for a late lunch after the tulips, the TVs in the restaurant were showing the news, including footage of the explosion. What struck me more than anything was that in the video, I saw dozens of people running TOWARD the danger. And it struck me that on a very bad day, there were some very good people doing very brave things.