It's Geologic!

MAPTASTIC:  We keep working our way through the huge packet of wonderful goodies we received a few weeks back, ahead of Earth Science Week. There were so many resources in the packet, it's taking more than a week to get through them, that's for sure. 

Recently, we've checked out posters about major extinction eras in our planet's history, plate tectonics, and geodsy ("the science of accurately measuring and understanding three fundamental properties of the Earth: its geometric shape, its orientation in space, and its gravity field— as well as the changes of these properties with time," definition per the National Ocean Service).

Today, we checked out a poster all about the rock types of the United States thanks to a poster from the American Geosciences Institute, which represents more than a quarter-million geoscientists.

One side of the poster featured a map of North America which was color-coded for geologic features of the land. Right away, the kids noticed that one of the colored categories of geologic types was plutonic rocks, and that they're plentiful in the Puget Sound region, where we live. They were pretty certain that the label didn't mean the ground in the areas was from Pluto, but we wanted to research the label.  

We hopped online and found an article on geology.about.com that told us that "plutonic rocks are igneous rocks that solidified from a melt at great depth. The name 'plutonic' refers to Pluto, Roman god of wealth and the underworld."

We learned that characteristics of plutonic rock includes tightly packed mineral grains of medium size (1 to 5 millimeters), with the grains being of roughly equal size. All of the mineral matter is in a crystalline form, and plutonic rocks typically look like granite. The reason they have large mineral grains is because they cooled over tens of thousands of years, or longer, and that allowed the individual crystals to grow large.

Studying the map, the kids also noticed a wide swath of the middle of North America was labeled as being siliciclastic. We turned to Google to find out more about that, and quickly found a lecture (in PDF form) all about the classification of sedimentary rocks, including clastic (siliciclastic), with subcategories of sandstones, mudstones (shales), and conglomerates.

When we flipped the poster over, we saw a banner headline that read "Celebrate Geologic Map Day! Friday, October 16, 2015." That would be today!

One item the poster prominently mentioned was that 2015 is the bicentennial celebration of first nationwide geological map. How 'bout that?!

The amazing map was made by William 'Strata' Smith (23 March 1769 – 28 August 1839).

An Englishman, Smith had a humble education and was not well connected socially. However, he knew his stuff!

Smith worked for mining companies and over time, became to recognize the different strata in land that had been excavated, and he realized that the combinations of distinctive fossils within a rock can be used to identify it. 

During his field work, Smith amassed an enormous and unique fossil collection, which he used as evidence to order his strata and make his maps. The Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom now has more than 2,000 of Smith’s fossils in their care.

Unfortunately, Smith's map was initially overlooked by the scientific community - and his work was frequently plagiarized. At one point, he was in such financial ruin, he spent time in a debtors' prison. Fortunately, Smith eventually received accolades for his work, and recognition for his accomplishments, and became known as the "Father of Geology".

You really should check out a big ol' image of Smith's history making map in this PDF from National History Museum in the United Kingdom. 
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/content/dam/nhmwww/discover/first-geological-map-of-britain/william-smith-1815-geological-map.pdf

We are rather fond of the official title Smith gave to his map: 'A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland; Exhibiting the Collieries and Mines, the Marshes and Fen Lands Originally Overflowed by the Sea, and the Varieties of Soil According to the Variations in the Substrata, Illustrated by the Most Descriptive Names'.

Many things made the map remarkable, one being Smith's innovative use of color and shading to represent each rock layer. In all, he had twenty-three strata, meticulously hand-colored in different tints.  

I was hoping to find a biographical video to show the kids about "Strata" Smith. Luckily, I landed on a great clip from the British Geological Survey, with an actor playing the Father of Geology.

https://youtu.be/CoUf1-_Lp54

HE'S NUMBER ONE:  Last night, we had the good fortune of clear skies, allowing us to witness a fly over of the International Space Station.

This morning, one of the first emails I read let us know that today, ISS resident Scott Kelly has now broken the record for cumulative time in space by a U.S. astronaut. 

    Photo: NASA
As of today, over four missions, Kelly has spent 383 days off of the Earth, breaking the record of 382 days,  previously held by Astronaut Mike Fincke.

Unfortunately, the clouds didn't allow us to see tonight's 8:18 ISS fly over. Hopefully Commander Kelly heard us chanting "You're Number One!" from our roofdeck.

Some other notable numbers:  NASA astronaut Mike Lopez-Alegria has spent 215 consecutive days in space. Scott Kelly will break that record on Oct. 29. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson has spent 377 total days in space. But neither of them are near Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka's 879 Days, the record for most cumulative days in space by any human.

On This Day

                              Image Credit: NASA

October 15: I woke up having completed 18,250 orbits of our sun. Yowza. No wonder I'm so tired.

One of the first things I learned today (thanks to an email from NASA) was that the Cassini spacecraft launched on my birthday, Oct. 15, in 1997. Nice of NASA to light such a big candle for me. ;)

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The photo above was taken from Hangar AF on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with a solid rocket booster retrieval ship in the foreground. It took Cassini seven years to reach Saturn, a 2.2 billion mile journey.

NASA controllers were pretty happy when Cassini reached orbit around the ringed planet on June 30, 2004.

Cassini's primary mission was four years, but the craft has certainly been a workhorse since completing that in 2008. Good ol' Cassini is still plugging along, getting things done. In fact, just yesterday, Cassini was closing in on Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn's.

             Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

While Cassini didn't spot any Saturnian Santa on Enceladus' North Pole, the craft did capture this photo of a "snowman" (actually a tight trio of craters), as it approached the icy moon Enceladus on an Oct. 14, 2015, flyby.

                                    Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
On Oct. 28, Enceladus will come within 30 miles (49 kilometers) of Enceladus' south polar region, passing through the moon's plume of icy spray. While doing so, it will sample the chemistry of the extraterrestrial ocean beneath the ice. We can't wait to read about those results!

Mission scientists hope the data will provide more insights about the ocean's chemistry, and evidence of how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the moon's ocean.

NASA has an online toolkit for all three final Enceladus flybys, available here: 
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/finalflybys, and there's lots more Cassini info on the mission's Web site: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini


GOING NOVA: Last night we had the great fortune of happening to tune into a NOVA episode just as it was beginning. The topic: "Cyberwar Threat."

Per the PBS Web site about the show, the episode "examines the science and technology behind cyber warfare and asks if we are already in the midst of a deadly new arms race."


Here's Annabelle's review ...

"CyberWar Threat" is an episode of the Nova TV series. "CyberWar Threat" was about how hackers and even entire nations can launch attack or wage wars, all using computers. One of the ways a hacker could damage a city is by hacking into a generator’s computer and making it “jump” by controlling the spark plugs. Hackers can also use your passwords if you went to an internet cafe and used their internet to manage anything like e-mail, where you need to sign in. They don’t do this by watching over your shoulder- they can use a program to track your keystrokes. On a larger scale, Sony pictures was blackmailed through hacking by a country we can only assume is North Korea, threatening to launch a cyber war if they released their movie, “The Interview”. Stuxnet is an infamous hack, because it’s very sneaky and could take down entire pipelines. Hacking could wage wars, so we need to be alert. Virus-blocking software already exists, but you can get malware so many ways it’s hard to cover all the bases.

And CJ has this to say about it ...

On October 14th, 2015, we watched a special PBS documentary called "CyberWar Threat", an episode of PBS's "Nova" series.

"CyberWar Threat" is a documentary about how recently, the internet has become dangerously like a battleground for waging warfare, and that all sorts of dangerous things can be done by expert hackers. For example, there was an experiment in 2007 known as "Project Aurora", which was a test to see how quickly hackers could knock out a major electric power generator. They made the generator "jump" multiple times, pausing between jumps, and eventually broke it. Something like this could be done in less than a minute by professional hackers, and could cause a blackout in an area for weeks.

This is not the only disturbing thing shown in "CyberWar Threat", and you can watch it on PBS' website. 

Near and Far

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team, Veil Nebula, the debris of one of the best-known supernova remnants

TAKING AIM: Exciting news from the Hubble Telescope Facebook feed today. "Always wanted to be an astrophotographer?" it asked.  

Why yes, please!

Fortunately, it's easy to become an astrophotographer for a day. Specifically, on Monday, October 19, when the White House is hosting White House Astronomy Night. Participants need not be in DC or own a telescope to participate. 

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, in collaboration with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, invite the public to use the online MicroObservatory Network to capture space images through a network of telescopes via the Internet.

Per the Hubble post, once people download an image, they can use free image-processing software to enhance and colorize it "just like professional astronomers do."

Afterwards, users can try to find an image of the same space object they've taken and compare it to one taken by one of NASA’s space telescopes. 

More information is available at http://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/news.html

PARKING: While making our rounds today, we happened to drive by a pocket sized park we'd never seen before. Of course we stopped, if just for four minutes. 

It looked so inviting, how could we not stop?!

CJ provides a few more details of our short visit. 

On October 14th, 2015, we went to the Ballard Corners Park, a park that, according to the park's website, is located on two lots between NW 62nd and 63rd streets along the west side of 17 Ave NW.

One particular thing we noticed about this park when we drove by it is the juxtaposition of a chair, sofa, and lamp (all of which are hard and fake) against the outdoor environment of the park. According to the City of Seattle official website, the Ballard Corners Park construction went through three phases. "Phase One" was completed in October of 2008, "Phase Two" was completed in 2009, and "Phase Three" was completed in Fall of 2009. According to the City of Seattle's website, the "living room" art installation, or the one with the couch and lamp, was made during the second phase. According to the website, the art installation was created by Nathan Arnold.

Annabelle weighs in, as well ... 

Ballard Corners Park started construction in 2008. It is dedicated to the corner stores of (old) Ballard. According to a PDF from ballardcornerspark.org, the land was originally a house, and was conceived as land for a park in 1996. There is a small display with two columns that have some history of the area, along with a small counter with spinning stools. The construction of the park was divided into three parts. Part 1 was comprised of constructing the portion of the park inside the sidewalks. Part 2 was creating the sidewalks and the stone furniture in the corner, which was built by Nathan Arnold. Part 3 was the “corner store” where the stools and columns were. The park certainly has an interesting history and it was fun to learn about it. Who knew such a small park could have such a story?

MORE ON MARS:  We're fresh from seeing "The Martian," and today discovered more NASA resources that a great movie tie-in.

For instance, there's the "Mars Survival Kit," a Web page that features Surviving and Thriving on Mars Activities (Grades K-5) . There, young explorers can take a trip to Mars with fun activities that share NASA’s journey to the Red Planet. Mars for Kids, targeted for grades 3-5, has games, crafts and exploration projects; Red Planet Read, Write and Explore incorporates science into elementary school literacy activities); NASA Imagine Mars challenges students to design a sustainable community, considering criteria and constraints in an engineering and design process. A Make Your Own Mars Rover activity encourages people to build their own rover with materials found around most any household (paper tubes, cardboard boxes, chop sticks, craft sticks, foil, and so on). And the Gaining Traction on Mars challenge is about building a better wheel. Check out its promo ...

https://youtu.be/4ug-e4QIPEE

Martian Minded

MARS MOBILE PROTOTYPE: Like the human and cargo carrying rover featured in "The Martian" (scene immediately above), NASA is currently working to on a vehicle that will be able to navigate tough terrain with the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) (top photo). Credits: Giles Keyte/NASA

MARTIAN MOVIE: Yesterday we finally made it out to see "The Martian," the number one movie in the world right now, based on Andrew Weir's novel.

Seeing NASA's logo and locations so prominently featured on the big screen was a big thrill! 

While the movie certainly took artistic license in many instances, there were a number of things throughout that had definite ties to NASA science. In fact, a couple of months back, NASA published an article listing nine real NASA technologies used in "The Martian" movie. They include an artificial landing habitat (hab), an off-Earth plant farm, water recovery, oxygen generation, a Mars-ready spacesuit, ion propulsion, solar panels, Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, extended spaceflight, and a Mars rover.

And today, we checked out a NASA article about the Acidalia Planitia part of Mars, where much of main character Mark Watney's time is spend on the Red Planet during "The Martian."

We can see what that area actually looks like thanks to this Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) photograph taken with the orbiter's  High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona 

Per NASA, much of the area is covered by dense fields of boulders up to several meters high that would be difficult to drive around (unlike Mark Watney's experience in the movie). And it turns out there are fissures associated with giant polygons, with steep rocky slopes that would be impassable. That would have been a big bummer in the movie, that's for sure!

Following is what CJ chose to share about "The Martian" ...

On October 12th, 2015, we went to the Historic Admiral Theater to see "The Martian," a science fiction movie that just came out about Mark Watney, an astronaut who gets left for dead on Mars after being presumed killed. On the Ares 3 mission, the crew (Mark Watney, Melissa Lewis, Rick Martinez, Beth Johanssen, Chris Beck, and Alex Vogel) are on the surface of Mars, outside of their "hab," or their artificial habitat. Unexpectedly, a dust storm appears, and the crew has to get into their MAV, or Mars Ascent Vehicle.

However, Mark Watney is hit with a piece of debris, and gets lost in the storm. Commander Lewis looks for Watney, but is unable to find him, and is forced to evacuate with the rest of the crew, believing him to be dead. However, Mark Watney is still alive, and he has to find a way to stay alive for four years before the Ares 4 crew arrives in Schiparelli, a long distance from where he is in Acidalia Plantitia. Watney uses his botany skills, with the potatoes he has with him (intended for Thanksgiving), so that he can generate a food supply (unfortunately, one with almost nothing other than potatoes).

Overall, I enjoyed "The Martian," both the book and the movie, but 010101100010000001100110011001110111011001111001011110010010000001100011011001010111001001110011011100100110010100100000011001110111010101110010001000000110111101100010011000100111100000101110.

By the way, if you want to know what all that binary at the end of his write up means, you first have to translate the binary to text, and then you have to plug that into a ROT13 translator.

Here is Annabelle's take on the movie. ... 

“The Martian” is a movie about a team of 6 astronauts on the Ares III crew that have arrived on Mars. However, a dust storm appears, which forces them to evacuate and leave early. One of the astronauts is struck down during the storm, and is believed to be dead. After the team has left, however, he is still alive and stranded alone. The first thing he does is head to the “HAB”, where he has to plan how to survive until the next mission, Ares IV, arrives on mars. This means he has to not only survive years on mars, he has to find the Ares IV mission site and get there. The movie does use some real science and it’s very entertaining, and I feel like I may have felt more suspense had I not read the book already. I thought the special effects were well done as well as the acting. Overall it was a very good movie, and I would definitely recommend it, whether you’ve read the book or not.                          

Here are a few more links to Martian-movie related Web sites for entertainment and, in some cases, education.
Meet the Ares 3 Crew: http://fox.co/Ares3
See what it takes to #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/TheRightStuff
Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses Our Greatest Adventure: http://fox.co/OurGreatestAdventure 
Watch Astronaut Mark Watney prepare for his #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/LeaveYourMark
The world unites to save one man: http://fox.co/BringHimHome
Watch Astronaut Mark Watney continue his research for the Ares 3 mission. #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/AresChemCam

DEBATABLE:  For our social studies education today, we watched the Democratic National Party's debate among presidential candidates. Topics touched upon covered current global conflicts, climate change, the domestic economy, the world economy, history, the future, and more. Overall, it was certainly a more comprehensive social studies lesson than reading a chapter in the average text book.

Star Wars Forever

FORCEFUL: Saturday was big fun, Star Wars being the focus of most of our doings. Oct. 10 was international Star Wars Reads day and, lucky for us, The Museum of Flight just south of Seattle, was host to a day's worth of activities and adventures.

We reported to The Museum of Flight bright and early for Death Star Ground School at 10 a.m. sharp. 

The kids sat through an entertaining briefing about the Death Star. At one point, the schematics on the screen looked very familiar to CJ. He raised his hand and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but aren't those the graphics from the Star Wars arcade game from 1983?" 

He earned his squadron an extra 10 points for his superior geek knowledge. ;)

After the ground school, the kids partook of Star Wars-themed craft activities. That included making some cool fingertip sized light sabers!

 They also visited a station where they got to try their hand at some programming. 

Pushing the directional buttons on a little unit could make it navigate a route - or not!

 It was super cute how they made Star Wars themed masks to ride atop the robots. 

Princess Leia nailed the program on the first try. :)

In the early afternoon, we reported the museum's main theater for the awards ceremony for the "Empire Writes Back" contest. CJ and Annabelle were each winners in their age categories, and had the opportunity to read their stories on stage. 

Here's a video of Annabelle reading her story ..,. 
https://youtu.be/-Mxf05s7Pg4


And here is CJ reading his creation ...
https://youtu.be/rZV1-fzsc7w


Here is CJ's brief regarding his Saturday. ... 

On October 10th, 2015, we went to The Museum of Flight, a place we frequently visit, for their Star Wars Reads event. Star Wars Reads Day is an international event about Star Wars fanfiction that is often celebrated a libraries and bookstores, according to the official Star Wars website. Both my sister and I had submitted stories for our grade categories. My sister wrote "Chewie Makes His Mark," a story about how Chewbacca became a pilot, and I wrote "Modal Nodes: The Untold Story," a tale about the iconic cantina band.

That day, we went to the "Death Star Ground School,, a 30-minute class about the specs of the Death Star, and how to take it down. During the class, our instructor showed us "what it looked like inside the capsule", which was a screen cap from a 1983 Star Wars arcade game. After the class, our instructor had us take slap-rocket toys, and we aimed them at something that looked like a hole in the Death Star.

After that, it was time to read our stories to an audience at the Museum of Flight's theater. Other winning stories read at the presentation included "The Three Ewok Friends," which is exactly what it says, "The Attack on Tatooine," a survivor of an attack on Tatooine and the events from his point of view, and "Gray Area." I enjoyed reading my story to the audience.

Overall, I enjoyed this year's Star Wars Reads Day at The Museum of Flight.

Here's Annabelle's version. ...

 On October 10, I went to an awards ceremony for the “Empire Writes Back” contest at The Museum of Flight, where I was one of the 6 winners in the Seattle area. There are thousands of these ceremonies going on around the country. The story I wrote that won was “Chewie Makes his Mark,” the tale of how Chewbacca became a pilot. I was inspired to write this book because I wondered how a wookiee of all things became the pilot of a rocket ship, or what a younger wookiee would look like. My brother also wrote a winning story, called “The Modal Nodes: the Untold Story,” which was about the cantina band. He was inspired by listening to the cantina music on a 10 hour loop on May 4^th (also known as "Star Wars Day"). We both got certificates and other prizes like cool Star Wars pencils and gift certificates. I am looking forward to participating in the contest next year, too! 

All of the winning stories were so different and so impressive in their own way. What a fun weekend! It's so great to see the Star Wars universe alive and well in the minds of today's youth!