Sun-shiny Day

POPPING BROCCOLI!: Imagine our surprise and delight this morning when we checked our countertop garden and found a couple of broccoli seeds had already sprouted. That was quick! We just planted them on Tuesday.

By this afternoon, multiple broccoli plants had poked through the soil. Excellent. It will be fun to watch and see what comes up next.

LOVIN' IT: On our way out the door to the kids' programming class today, CJ pronounced it his favorite of the classes he's taking it right now. "It's one place to let your imagination break free of the chains of your mind," says CeeJ. :)

YES WE CAN! When I logged onto Facebook this morning, about the first thing I saw was a post from Col. Chris Hadfield onboard the ISS. He posed a question to readers: "Attention physicists - we've been traveling 8 km/sec for 5 months. How much has our time relativity differed from everyone else?"

I called the kids over to the computer to show the Col. Hadfield's question. They both recognized it as exactly the type of scenarios we've been going over this week in our Stanford via Coursera class about Einstein's special theory of relativity.

In fact, as regular readers might recall, just two days ago I posted this equation, the Lorentz factor ...

                             

Well guess what? That's exactly what we needed to figure out the answer to Col. Hadfield's question. 

It was fun reading all the answers/comments on the thread. "That's cool! We know all that stuff!" Annabelle said as she read people debating how to figure it out. 

Later, Hadfield posted, "The correct answer (for those still calculating): gamma = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) (v = 8km/s, and c = the speed of light/300,000). t = t_0/gamma (t_0 = 5 months). dt = t_0 - (t_0/gamma) = 0.0046s"

In other words, Hadfield has 'gained' .0046 of one second on us during his 5 months in low Earth orbit (or, he has traveled into the future 0.0046 seconds, and to the "future us" he's 0.0046 secs younger).

As one commentor pointed out, "He's asking how much time dilation he has experienced due to his high velocity. Objects moving at close to the speed of light experience less time than objects at rest, relative to one another. The Col. Is moving at 0.0026% of the speed of light, so the time dilation is very small, but he has literally experienced less time than we have on earth. For more info just search for "time dilation". There are simple explanations involving trains and bouncing balls and whatnot. It's not actually too complicated. The answer I got was 4.6 milliseconds."

As we read that we were nodding our heads in agreement. And to think that just a week ago, we wouldn't have understood hardly any of it. What a different a week makes (thank you Coursera and Professor Larry Randles Langerstrom!).

RESERVOIR DOGS: This afternoon, the kids participated in a yoga demonstration class for their longtime yoga teacher who was training other teachers. For the session, we drove down to Columbia City in Rainier Valley. 

It was beautiful out today and I told the kids if we left early, we could hit a park or two in that part of town, where we haven't been for months, if not a year plus. 

We spent about an hour at sprawling Jefferson Park. 

It's a real gem, formerly land off limits but now it's a fantastic gathering place situated atop a water reservoir. It affords lovely views of Seattle and the bay from the southeast perspective.

One thing that sets this park apart from any other we've ever been in are the great little plaques embedded in the ground 'round its 45 acres. For instance this medallion lets people know about the water underfoot. 

As does this ... 

The kids became a part of the sculpture (note the teeny little Space Needle just west of CJ's, um, posterior).

Of course, there is a playground, too. Here, CJ & Annabelle enjoy a Class-1 lever.

FLYING HIGH: Several times today, we checked in on Solar Impulse, a first-of-its kind solar powered plane. 

It took off from California this morning at 6:12 a.m.  After class and errands this a.m., we checked in with it a little after 2 p.m. Right then, it was approaching NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.

Solar Impulse was flying at a rate of 26 knots (or 29.9 miles per hour), at 100 percent battery status, 37 percent engine power, 49 percent solar generator power, ground speed is 48 knots, with an altitude of 21742.  The temperature up there was -13 degrees Celsius, or 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

We loved the mission Web site's "be the pilot" feature. It let us ride along in the cockpit along with pilot Bertran Piccard (don't you just Love that his name?!)  Super interesting. We'll be tracking it over the weekend as it continues its filght cross-country.

Solar Powered

© Solar Impulse | Pool | AFP | Fabrice Coffrini

READY FOR TAKE OFF: Beginning tomorrow, Friday, May 3, a piloted plane will fly across America powered only the sun. The ultimate goal is a round the globe trip in 2015.

Ever since reading about it in Popular Science, we've had our eyes on Solar Impulse, an amazing airplane unlike any other. 

It's set to take off from Moffett Airfield in California at 6 a.m. (Pacific daylight time) on May 3, and land at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix after midnight. 

© Solar Impulse Jean Revillard

The biggest challenge for the plane is weight, of course. As it flies during the night, it has to draw upon its batteries charged during the day. The plane's wide wings are covered with nearly 12,000 silicon solar cells, which generate an average of 50 kilowatts over a 24-hour period. 

The plane will only travel about 43 miles per hour, and it doesn't bank much (only up to five degrees). During the day, the plane will ascend to between 27,000 and 28,000 feet. At nighttime, it will dip down to 4,500 feet.

I sure wish it were flying in our neck of the woods, but we're not the sun capital of the world, so I'm not surprised we're not on its itinerary. But we'll be watching from afar. 

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IN THE WEEDS: Part one of P.E. today was pulling weeds. So! Much! Fun!  This afternoon, the kids had their weekly yoga class. Imagine their delight when their teacher worked some Pink Floyd into the mix ("Breathe" and "Wish You Were Here"). Pretty cool!

TIME DILATION & STUFF: Today's Einstein lectures covered the wackiness that happens when people and clocks start moving. That, and the concept of length contraction - in short, that measuring the length of a moving object gives a result that is shorter than when the object is at rest. Yes, really. Wild stuff. 

After the lectures we listened to, it was test time. CJ and Annabelle seriously finished the 8-question test while I was still contemplating question #1. This made me feel old and stupid and proud all at the same time, LOL. In the end we all aced the test, so it's all good. 

Bow Wow

DOG DAYS: Still sunny, so "P.E." was outside today. First, at a park by the kids' Shoreline classes, and then at Magnolia Park after dinner.

The latter park has towering madrona trees (see above - and can you spot Annabelle?), which a long ago Navy geographer mistook for magnolias, hence our neighborhood and the park's name.  It's a lovely place we don't get to often, and after tonight, we probably won't go there much.  Apparently some locals have decided to turn the place into their de facto off leash area.

Case in point: Here's one little corner of the park. There are four dogs in the photo above. One is on a leash.

Within 60 seconds of us arriving at the park, our dogs (on leashes) were each "greeted" by a charging off-leash dog, growling and teeth bared. Nice doggie! Its elderly owner stood by and smiled, as if this was a friendly 'hello.'  When Christian told the dog to stop and stuck his foot out between our dog and the aggressive one, pushing it away, the woman was aghast and told Christian, "Don't do that!" to which he immediately replied, "You're dog's supposed to be on a leash." Without hesitation she replied, "I know," but then continued to make noises about how he should be nice to her dog. Um, NO, bite me (and I don't mean that literally). I don't think we have to be nice to a growling, charging dog showing its teeth.

That said, of course, it's not the dog's fault that it has a stupid owner.

Despite dumb people, we were able to enjoy the view. The kids had fun swinging and rolling down the grassy hills. :)

IN ACTION: In the kids' science class this afternoon, they continued learning all about Type-I, -II and -III levers.

A few minutes after we got back home, I look over at the couch and see this ...

"Look, we're Type III levers!" Annabelle announced, and then she and CJ proceeded to explain how their 'effort' was between the pivot (fulcrum) and the load.

Pretty geeky - and funny!. :)
 
GAMMA RAYS: Here's how we spent part of our morning.
                                 
That's the Lorentz factor, or gamma factor, take your pick.  It figures prominently in Einstein's theory of relativity work.

The Einstein-related lectures we listened to today were about the relativity of light clocks. We learned that moving clocks run slow, which is oh-so-interesting, don't you think?

Today also involved deriving equations (like the Lorentz factor). At one point, I told the kids to put their pencils down and forget about trying to write it all down. Instead, just listen to professor Larry Randles Langerstrom and follow what he's doing mentally, so that you can understand it (rather than just copy it).

That must have worked because they both aced their chapter assessment test. w00t!

WORLD'S SMALLEST MOVIE: This evening we watched a film that is the the Guinness World Record book as the smallest stop motion film. It was made by IBM, who reports that "the ability to move single atoms-the smallest particles of any element in the universe-is crucial to IBM's research in the field of atomic memory."

But you know those wacky nanophysicists. They like to have their fun, so "A Boy and His Atom" was born.

Perhaps even more interesting than the wee little film itself is the story of how it was made. http://youtu.be/xA4QWwaweWA

And Sow it Begins

DIRTY WORK: For a change, we never even left the house today. Instead, we concentrated on getting caught up on school work and getting our seeds into some potting soil.

First, the kids carefully filled up the starter tray with soil. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, though that's my own fault. I gave them small spoons and scoops to work with. When we were nearly done, it occurred to me that I should have dumped the bag of soil atop the tray and we could have spread it out and filled the cups. Oh well, next time.

The dogs were incredibly helpful during the process, of course.

Once the tray was filled, we took into the house and planted some seeds.  They were all supposed to be under a half inch of dirt per package instructions, so I had the kids each make a "proper depth stick" by making a mark on a Popsicle stick  1/2 inch from its end.

Annabelle planted watermelon seeds first. She's hoping they're fruitful.

CJ carefully read the instructions on the pumpkin seed packet. We have had ZERO luck with pumpkins in the past. Maybe this will be our year.

The kids made markers to help us keep our seeds straight. 

We're looking forward to the growth of our garden for the months to come.

WEIRD SCIENCE: You have to love the topic for this week's lectures in our "Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity" Coursera class this week. It's called, "The Weirdness Begins." How intriguing!

And, as advertised, it didn't take long for things to start getting weird. Today we learned absolute time cannot be defined, that leading clocks lag and about the relativity of simultaneity.  Heady, fascinating stuff.

NEEDLE POINT: This weekend we were happy to have the chance to meet a nice couple from Regina, Saskatchewan, for breakfast. We (virtually) met them through a Facebook group of space fans, and they were passing through Seattle on their way back home from a month-long cruise. 

We thought we'd make them some space shuttle and Space Needle cookies as a little welcome gift. When I got done decorating those, I let the kids get busy making their own custom Space Needles. 

It's fun to color outside the lines, so to speak.

SUPER SONIC, OH YEAH!:  Yesterday we watched Facebook, Twitter and spaceflight related Web sites for updates on Virgin Galactic's big day. It was the first flight of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) with a rocket engine strapped on.

I love, Love, LOVE the look of this bird. It's like something off the cover of a sci fi novel. 

Virgin Galactic was the world's first commercial spaceline. Yesterday's flight marks the entrance into the final phase of vehicle testing prior to commercial service from Virgin Galactic's Spaceport America in New Mexico.

SS2 launched over the Mojave Desert, after separating from WhiteKnightTwo, its carrier aircraft. SS2 reached a height of 55,000 feet, where it fired up its rocket engine for 16 seconds. During that burst, SS2 reached a speed of mach 1.2 

They released video of the flight today.

The company will continue to expand their testing, and looks to have a full space flight completed by the end of this year.

Storms & Such

OUT OF DOORS:  This weekend got a little grey on us, but today the sun put up a good fight. We celebrated its efforts by going back to Golden Gardens and

playing in the sand.

                 
Golden Gardens has sandy and rocky beaches. It has daisy and clover filled fields. It has a great playground and a nice concession stand and more.

Seattle, your roads suck, and your police dept. is suspect, but your park system rocks. 
WEEKEND REWIND: Saturday we felt compelled to take advantage of a couple of events I'd learned about online.

First, was Astronomy Day at Pacific Science Center. On our way in we saw there was a live science show about illusions and so we parked ourselves and waited for it. It was fun and entertaining.

Once the show was over, we headed out for astronomy day activities. They were geared for kids a little younger than CJ and Annabelle, but they had fun stations throughout the center,  building paper space shuttles and such.

At one stop, we had a chance to visit with a man associated with Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope.  We were familiar with the software from a visit to the UW's planetarium some months back. But on this day, imagine the fun the kids had directing a tour of the universe with Kinect software!

After Astronomy Day, we headed across the pond (Lake Washington) to Bellevue for "Math Fest" event at a mall.

 The "mall" factor should have been enough to stop me. I would rather get a filling than go to a mall, no lie. But I was willing to set that aside in the name of education.

Because we pre-registered, the kids each got a free t-shirt, which was super cool.  Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, a whole lot of other people were interested in free t-shirts and math games. ;) That meant for pretty darn long and often disorganized 'lines' at every station.  We left after about a half hour.  :/

STORMY WEATHER: Normally, a hurricane is something to be feared. But if it's on one of Saturn's poles and this pretty, it's OK to just admire it. Thank you, NASA, for the lovely photograph.

ANOTHER ONE DOWN: We have managed to hang in through week 3 of a Stanford course all about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. That makes me feel pretty damn good.

None of us had any trouble with this week's tests, mercifully. The homework, however, was harder. We had to calculate the length of wavelengths, based on the frequency of a radio signal. And they had to calculate things like how long it takes light from the surface of our sun to reach Earth, and how long it would take to travel to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our solar system, if we could travel at the speed of light. (It's a long, loooong time, but I can't be more specific without breaking the honor code.)

Going in, I told the kids that this math really wasn't any harder than anything they'd already done, it was just on a larger scale (more zeros!). I showed them how to change their Windows calculators from regular to scientific view (so it could deal with way bigger numbers).

I'm happy to report they each aced the test. How cool is that? Each of the three weeks we've completed of the class, I feel like we've been hanging on by the edge of our teeth, but the kids are doing great. Guess I should just worry about myself.