I'll let CJ tell you a little bit about it. ...
On February 28th, I went to the Pacific Science Center for the annual Polar Science Weekend event sponsored by the University of Washington.
One of the activities I took part in was a demonstration where I put a cardboard narwhal horn and learned about the fact that often times, to get food, narwhals have to dive the length of the Space Needle down below the arctic water just to get some food. During autumn, the narwhals have to dive the length of 5 Space Needles just to get the fish that they need to eat!
Another activity we took part in was a taste test where I would take different samples of different water and determine which were saltier than the others. The jars that I took samples from (not labeled in order of saltiness) were A, B, C, D, E, and F. They were all from natural lakes, and the saltiest (be glad you didn't taste it) was D, which was from the Red Sea, dividing Africa and Asia.
One other activity I took part in was where about 1000 wood toy boats would be set free in the Arctic Ocean and we could write messages on the wooden boats while they lasted. I don't know if the boats are on their way to the Arctic Ocean yet, but they will eventually be there.
And here's Annabelle's report. ...
On March 1st, 2015, I went to an event at Pacific Science Center called Polar Science Weekend. The event includes many different activites from many different companies and researchers. There are so many things to do, and I can tell you 3 of them.
The first activity was about guessing the size of different waves in the oceans; they had options like the Atlantic and South before they got to the Arctic Ocean. The waves could get huge in hurricanes and storms in other place, but what about the Arctic? They told us that it depended on the ice. The ice melting could provide more open water for waves in the summer, or ice growing could leave less during the winter.
Next was the salinity taste test, where you got a cup and tried water from 6 jugs, labeled A-F. Some water was not salty at all where others made you want to spit it out. After you had tried the water you had to put the right percentage of salt on the right water jug. There were different options like freshwater, soup, blood, the red sea, and more.
Lastly was the narwhal mysteries stand. The stand has you put on a fake narwhal horn and go through the ocean as you learn a narwhal's feeding patterns. A fun fact I learned was that narwhals can dive 8 Space Needles deep on one breath just to get food. The stand was certainly my favorite out of all.
We also visited with folks from Point Defiance Zoo. They have a cool polar bear display there, and they brought a pelt for people to feel.
We also learned about how water (and whatever's in the water) flows up around Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
LAUNCH: Sunday afternoon, rockets on board, we headed out to 60-Acre Park, some 40 minutes north and east of home. It was our destination because that park is the only one in the greater Seattle area where it's legal to launch model rockets.
The Northwest Rocketry group was holding a rocket launching session when we arrived. They had a pretty sweet set up for launching rockets one after another.
We had our own launchpad, however, so we set that up.
We decided to launch an old red rocket we found at Goodwill years ago first.
Unfortunately, we had a few 3-2-1 countdowns with no lift offs. ...
Turns out the contacts in the remote weren't working well, so Christian did a like MacGyvering, as the saying goes. ...
Did I mention the local rocketry club even had a weather balloon? It was very helpful in determining where our rocket would wind up ... if the chute deployed.
Turns out wind was not a 'problem' with our launch of the red rocket, because the parachute didn't deploy. :/
Turns out parachutes don't deploy too well when they are melted together.
Bummer.
Next up was the rocket CJ built last weekend at The Museum of Flight.
It took off just fine, but it stuck the landing. ...
As in no-parachute, so it stuck into the ground after a rapid descent. Doh!
CJ ran across the field to fetch it. Fortunately, it absorbed the landing well and will live to see another launch.
Sensing a (not-good) parachute trend, Christian added more wadding on subsequent launches. That, and I asked them if they'd used talcum powder on the chutes. I remembered from rocketry class back when I was in fifth grade that's a good idea to help them deploy smoothly.
None of our chutes on Sunday had talcum on them, it turns out. Fortunately enough, I immediately through of a work around ...
my makeup compact!
Fortunately, the wadding and powder did the trick. Annabelle's parachute deployed nicely!
We saved the SpaceX rocket or last. It lifted off as expected, but we had too-puny a rocket motor on it, so I didn't exactly soar the clouds. Rather, it reached an Apex of about 25 feet before it started descending and its chutes popped. Oh well, next time we'll go bigger!
DATE WITH A DWARF: This Friday, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will make history when it reaches dwarf planet Ceres, some 257 million miles from Earth (about 100 million miles farther than Mars). Ceres is in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's the largest unexplored world in our inner solar system.
During its travels to Ceres, Dawn spent a year orbiting Vesta, a giant asteroid, from 2011 to 2012.
This morning, we watched a live news conference from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's von Karman Auditorium. We learned about Dawn's interesting ion propulsion system, which Dawn project manager Robert Mase called "big science on a small budget."
Here's a short, silent movie about Dawn's approach of Ceres: http://youtu.be/LP2zbGFXyk0
And here's a link to the presser from this morning, if you are so inclined: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/59452133.
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