SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: Don't forget, tomorrow afternoon marks the photobombing opportunity of a lifetime! 

Photos of the Earth taken from from the outer solar system are rare. The most famous is the "Pale Blue Dot" shot of 23 years ago, by Voyager 1, from 4 billion miles away.  Friday afternoon, there'll be another shot. 


Instead of regurgitating the facts, I'm just going to include most of NASA's well written press release on the topic below.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Two NASA spacecraft, one studying the Saturn system, the other observing Mercury, are maneuvering into place to take pictures of Earth on July 19 and 20.

The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft will occur between 2:27 and 2:42 p.m. PDT (5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT, or 21:27 and 21:47 UTC) Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away from Earth. NASA is encouraging the public to look and wave in the direction of Saturn at the time of the portrait and share their pictures via the Internet.

The Cassini Earth portrait is part of a more extensive mosaic -- or multi-image picture -- of the Saturn system as it is backlit by the sun. The viewing geometry highlights the tiniest of ring particles and will allow scientists to see patterns within Saturn's dusty rings. Processing of the Earth images is expected to take a few days, and processing of the full Saturn system mosaic will likely take several weeks. ...

Details on how to find Saturn in the sky and participate in the event are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/waveatsaturn .

The public can share pictures by using the hashtag #waveatsaturn on Twitter, or uploading pictures to the event's Flickr page at:http://www.flickr.com/groups/wave_at_saturn/ .
the event's Facebook page is: http://bit.ly/waveatsaturn .

I found a blog that gives the most straightfoward instructions regarding where to look "at" Saturn at the appointed time (you won't really be able to see it, of course). Go here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn/viewing/

The bottom line: For those in the west, you should wave at Saturn very low on the eastern horizon from 2:27 to 2:42 p.m. PDT. (That's right, you have to wave for 15 minutes straight! Ha ha, just kidding. Do whatever feels right for you.)

Image courtesy: NASA/JPL

We'll certainly be doing it - from the grounds of Seattle Center, as we have a 3 p.m. appointment there tomorrow afternoon for the exhibit feedback study group we're in at Pacific Science Center.

The nice NASA folks have even come up with an interface so that you can print out your official "I Waved at Saturn" certificate. Go here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn/certificate/


BRITISH INVASION: We've been counting down the days until Sir Paul McCartney's concert at Safeco Field on Friday night.

It's exciting for a number of reasons, the most obvious reason being, well, it's Paul McCartney. ;) But another reason the event will be special is because it's the first full blown concert at Safeco Field - which is kind of hard to believe given that the stadium opened in 1999, 14 years ago.  The Seattle Times had a front page story about it yesterday. It's a pretty Big Darn Deal.

I had the kids read the story so they can better appreciate all the work that's going on behind the scenes in order to make their Friday night memorable.

We also watched the BrainPOP movie about The Beatles (a BrainPOP subscription is required). From it, the kids learned a bit about The Beatles roots and their discography, as well as the British Invasion in general. 

After the BrainPOP video, the kids took a related quiz, and then completed an activity called 'Analyze It." They had to read lyrics from "I'm Looking Through You" and "Eleanor Rigby" and give their own interpretations of what they meant.  

The BrainPOP video made mention of the Beatles' debut appearance in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan show. Of course, we had to find that on YouTube. The video we watched has been nicely remastered. The kids loved it.


ON THE PAD: It's a little early for most West Coasters, but if you're up early Friday morning, you an watch the launch of a pretty United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral. On board is the the U.S. Navy's second Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-2). The launch window is 5:48-6:32 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 19.
Built by Lockeed Hartin, the MUOS-2 will provide narrowband tactical communications for U.S. forces on the move. 

Here's a video of technicians encapsulating the satellite inside a ULA Atlas V 5-meter diameter payload fairing.


Spaceflight now will have live, streaming coverage of the event, and updates prior. Check it out here: 
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av040/status.html

BALANCING ACT: Our progress in "The Science of Gastronomy" continues. This morning's lectures were about balancing tastes and flavors and the infinite possibilities for combining them. 

Professor King explaned how taste inhibitors and enhancers work. For instance, we learned that adding salt to something can enhance its sweetness and inhibit sour notes; adding acid to something enhances the salty taste, and sugar inhibits both salt and bitter taste.   

For our homework today, we had to whip up five liquid concoctions: 

Drink A: 1 teaspoon of vinegar into 100 ml of water
Drink B: 1 teaspoon of vinegar and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar into 100 ml of water
Drink C: 1 teaspoon of vinegar and 1/4 teaspoon of sugar into 100 ml of water
Drink D: 1 teaspoon of vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar into 100 ml of water
Drink E: 1 teaspoon of vinegar and 1 teaspoon of sugar into 100 ml of water

The trepidation grew as we did the mixing. "It seems disgusting, drinking vinegar, to me," CJ weighed in. But being the good researcher he is, CJ soldiered through tasting all of the solutions. Heck, by the time we got to Drink D, CJ wanted more than one sip. :)

WHAT A DIFFERENCE TWO DAYS MAKES: I've been experimenting around with kale smoothies the past couple of days. The first day (kale, strawberries, and Greek yogurt), as you might recall, was an abject failure. Yesterday was better. I used less kale (the first day I had waaaay too much by any recipe you'll find), and used watermelon instead of strawberries, and that helped. Today, using info I've gleaned from our gastronomy class, BTW, I opted for a healthy mountain of kale complimented with a big banana, nonfat Greek yogurt and a teaspoon of organic honey. Miraculously, when Annabelle saw the ingredients, she asked, "Can I like the spoon?" 

Naturally, I gave her a spoonful and offered up more in her own cup.  

"Man, this kale smoothie is good! And that, coming from a kid, is amazing," was her review.  

Hearing that, CJ wanted in on the action, of course. He ran and fetched a cup and approached me, asking, "May I have a kale smoothie, please?" Naturally, I was happy to oblige. I poured a nice helping from my cup to his. He chugged it down and declared, "One thing I'll say is it's definitely better than the first one." 

They both gave an enthusiastic 'yes!' when I asked them if they'd be interested in drinking it again. Sweet Smoothie Success!

PANDA CAM: Zoo Atlanta has a new pair of giant panda cubs! Their mother is 15-year old Lun Lun. 

Wonderful photo by: Curt http://www.flickr.com/photos/curt/566225918/?reg=1&src=comment

The cubs, both boys, are the first giant panda twins to be born in the U.S. since 1987.  

You can watch the action (well mostly lots of inaction, but it's still interesting) here: http://www.zooatlanta.org/1212/panda_cam

Wednesday

ON THE TIPS OF OUR TONGUES: The blackberries are here, the blackberries are here!

Well, at least a few of them - but a few is better than none! Today, CJ and Annabelle strained to reach some growing on a steep hillside by the ballfield at Bayview Park.

Later tonight, the tastebuds were put to use again as we completed an assignment for our "Science of Gastronomy" course.

Tonight professor King spoke volumes about how we taste and what we taste (yes, including umami). We learned lots about the types and locations of taste of receptors in our body. The professor also covered the topic of "supertasters." CJ reminded us that at the Seattle Science Expo a month or so ago, there was a booth there with a banner that asked, "Are you a supertaster?" We were each given strips to taste. Annabelle and Christian tasted nothing but the paper of the strip, while CJ and I winced at its bitterness. Turns out we're supertasters (along with about 25 percent of the population, and more women than men are supertasters). It's a genetic. thought to be related to the presence of the TAS2R38 gene, specifically. 

We also learned lots about saliva - how it's made and what its functions (as transportation, a solvent, protection, and more) are. And we learned why you should wash capsaicin-laced foods down with full fat milk (it's soluble in lipids) instead of beer (alcohol can make it seem hotter!).

Our assignment tonight was to dry all the saliva off our tongues and then try to taste salt or sugar. Surprise, surprise, it had a nearly imperceptible taste. Then, we repeated the taste with a 'normal' (not dry) mouth and, of course, we could taste the sugar or salt, no problem. Well done, saliva, well done.

BUDDING ARTIST: Annabelle spends a fair amount of time most every day drawing. Often it's crayon or pencil on paper, often it's with graphic software. I've been super impressed with her (self taught) progress as of late. For instance, here is a progression of a baby shark she drew and then colored.

And here's a turtle. 

MATHS: This week I started an online class from Stanford called "How to Learn Math." So far, it's absolutely riveting. Professor Jo Boaler has made a career out of studying math teaching and discerning why math evokes such strong negative feelings for so many. There's a nice overview article about the class here: https://ed.stanford.edu/news/new-online-course-learning-love-math. I'm one of 20,000+ parents/teachers enrolled.

Boaler's class seems very necessary when you start reading about students experiences in and perceptions about math education. For example, one survey of adults found that four out of 10 hated math in school, twice as many as any other subject. Yowza.

I'd highly recommend anyone who is in a position to teach or help anyone in math to check it out. The lectures are anything but the standard dry sermons. They are sprinkled with interviews with students and other math experts, and along the way there are short, relevant assignments. The ones so far are largely based on the course taker's observations and experiences - in other words, there's no long hard math quiz or final to worry about! ;)

One of our assignments asked us to make a concept map of themes we heard emerging from interviews with students about their feelings toward math. Here's what I came up with.

This fall, Boaler will be offering a version of the course for kids ages 10-ish in the upcoming school year. I know a couple of students who will be enrolled!

Taste Sensations

MEAN GREEN: I've been threatening to make a kale smoothie (it's all the rage) for days now. This morning, we finally got 'round to it.

It looked so pretty sitting there in the food processor, with the bright red berries, creamy Greek yogurt and crunchy green kale. We gave it a good spin, and I poured the concoction into three cups.

I tasted it first, with my back to the kids, as I didn't want to pollute their palates. Good thing my back was to them, as I'm sure I grimaced. Not deterred, I gave them a hard sell, telling them to drink up the glorious elixir. 

Here's Annabelle's face at first taste.

And CJ looked like this. 

Sorry the photo is blurry. He was shuddering violently. Once he could talk, CJ spat out, ""Oh my, this tastes bad. What kind of abomination is this?"

And so, our first foray into the world of drinking your kale was a rather miserable failure. I will not be deterred. Stay tuned for Round 2.

TO THE MOON: On this day in history (July 16), Apollo 11 lifted off from Cape Canaveral. A towering craft at 363-feet tall, it was the summer of '69 and on board were astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., (you can call him Buzz). 

(credit:NASA-KSC)

(credit:NASA-KSC)

Four days later, Neil and Buzz were walking on the moon. 

RED PLANET POETRY: A couple weeks back, the kids and I got in on a NASA promotion to have our names on board their MAVEN spacecraft, which will be Mars-bound after its launch this November. However, getting our names on board came with a catch. We had to submit a Mars-inspired haiku, as well. 

Here's Annabelle's:

Fourth in our system
The red one floats in orbit
We come to explore

And CJ's:

Do you have life there?
That is what I wonder now
We cannot stop here

And mine: 

Mysterious Mars
Our rusty, dusty neighbor
Enchanting you are

Now, the public can vote on their favorite haikus. (You can vote for us by clicking on the embedded links with our names, above). There were nearly 30,000 haikus submitted, so I'm pretty sure John Q. Public isn't going to read all of them. Or even 100 of them. They'll probably read a page or two of them, and cast a couple votes. Our haikus are very near the last of thousands of pages, and we're not social media gurus, so we're not thinking we're going to win that contest. ;) But the way I see it, we've already won, as our names will be rocketing toward Mars come fall. (Incidentally, our names are already ON Mars, as we participated in a get your name on board program for Mars Science Laboratory ("Curiosity"), as well.

And speaking of Mars, right now Curiosity is on a Red Planet road trip. It started on July 4 is heading for Mount Sharp, a Martian mountain that rises 3.4 miles high (about the same as Mt. Rainier). The rover isn't going to set any land speed records as its top speed is just .09 MPH (.14 KM/H). As of July 9, MSL has a total odometer reading of 325 feet since it touched down in early August of 2012. Mission managers estimate it will take Curiosity nearly a year to make the 5-mile trek to the mountain.

This image from NASA/JPL-Caltech shows the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The rover's rock-sampling drill in the lower left corner of the image. You can see the lower slopes of Mount Sharp at the top of the photo.

TASTE TEST: As previously mentioned, we've started our "Science of Gastronomy" course through Coursera. One of our Week 1 assignments was doing an experiment that involved a 'taste map' of our tongues.

We were to use cotton swabs to apply four different mixtures (sweet, salty, bitter [cocoa powder], sour [vinegar]) to four different regions of our tongues and then chart the intensity of the taste. 

It was a fun exercise, but it's not an exact science. In fact, the 'fact' that different sections of the tongue are exclusively responsible for registering different basic tastes has been debunked in recent years. 

Sun City

SUN DAY: All day Saturday we worked around the house and yard, except for an hour or so in the morning when we went for a nice long walk and spotted our first blackberry of the season! There are thousands to come, no doubt. 

Come Sunday, I was itching to go to the Mariners' game. I kept my eye on Craigslist and Stubhub, but couldn't find tickets at my 'give' point  ($15 apiece, half face value), until about 2 hours and 5 minutes before first pitch, a trio popped up on Stubhub. We jumped on them (only $12.83 apiece!) and then bought our fourth from a scalper at the same price point. Sweet! 

It was a LOVELY day at the park. Heaven on Earth, really.

A foul pole never looked so lovely, right? ;)

FUZZY WUZZY: This weekend, a Facebook friend turned me us on to some live bear cams. First, was a cam trained on Alaska's Brooks River in Katmai National Park. There, each year, over a hundred brown bears descend on a mile long stretch of Brooks River to chow down on the largest Sockeye Salmon run in the world. It's very entertaining to watch. I find myself switching between rooting for the bears and the salmon.

From the site above, I noticed the site had lots of other wildlife live cam links. For instance, one of polar bear Ilka and her twin cubs at Scandinavian Wildlife Park in Denmark. 

TASTY: This evening, we completed week 1 of "The Science of Gastronomy," a Coursera course via The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Here's our campus. ...

Well, at least virtually. But isn't it LOVELY? Maybe we can see it for ourselves some day...In the meantime, our professor's name is King, which you have to love. :) So far, so good - we've already learned lots!

For instance, we've learned about how energy can be transferred through conduction, comparing heat capacity and heat conductance, cooking by convection, increasing the boiling point of water with salt or sugar, cooking by radiation and more. 

One of the lectures we watched demonstrated how different materials conduct heat, which speaks to choices when it comes to cooking vessels. The charts and examples showed us that metals conduct heat significantly better than ceramics and plastics. 

We decided to replicate the experiment on our own. 

We put two ice cubes in small plastic bags, and set them on four different surfaces: ceramic, plastic, foil and copper. After five minutes, it was clear to see the copper and foil samples were melting more quickly.

Afer 10 minutes they looked like this. They are from left to right ceramic, plastic, foil and copper. As you can see, the copper cubes were completely melted. Amazing! Science! Woot!

This first weeks' lessons also touched upon hunger and satiety. The lectures covered why we need food, how we determine whether we're full or not, how we determine if food is good, and how sound, texture and the other senses play into our eating experiences. Interesting stuff that we can use every darn day.

One of our assignments this week had to do with sensory specific satiety. It involved eating a 'meal' of chocolate. Ten bites of chocolate, spread out over 30 minutes. Pure torture. ;)"I think this is my favorite quiz ever," Annabelle remarked after 'having' to eat and rate her second piece.

The exercise involved rating the level of "pleasantness of item one after eating," and then the pleasantness" of pieces 2-10. Won't surprise \you to learn the 'pleasantness' went down with successive pieces. Chocolate is good, but it turns out there *is* such a thing as too much of a good thing.