Flying High

WINGING IT: This morning, we dropped Annabelle at The Museum of Flight for a Women Fly workshop. Lucky girl, I wish it wasn't limited to middle school students only. 

Here's what Annabelle has to say about the experience. ...

Today I visited the Museum of Flight for their annual Women Fly event. Today was middle school day, so girls from around the region in middle school were invited to participate.

In the morning, each girl was assigned 3 workshops to visit before lunch. The first one I went to was called “Exploring the Solar System” where we used magnets as a substitute for a gravity assist around a planet. The gravity assist would help a metal marble (representing a spacecraft) roll into one of 4 cups representing moons the spacecraft was supposed to visit. I did this same workshop last year, and it’s equal parts frustrating and rewarding as you attempt and eventually succeed in getting the trajectory and speed just right.

The second workshop I visited was about how Alaska Airlines uses GPS to plot flights when there’s little to no visibility. The pilots even use iPads in the cockpit so they can communicate with the satellites and show the path they’ll take.

The final workshop I visited before taking a lunch break was about how professional pilots fill out flight sheets that tell airports where and when they take off, how much fuel they have, and anything else notable such as the plane’s ID code and colors. This form is usually in case the pilot crashes, has to divert course, or doesn’t make it for some other reason. The instructor showed us how certain terms are shortened to make the chart easier to fill out and understand (such as Direct Flight being shortened to a D with an arrow through it).

The final activity for the day was the activity fair; a series of booths in the great gallery where we were allowed to learn about career opportunities for girls in STEM. While I didn’t stick around in the fair for long, I was able to grab some cool souvenirs from the stands and I was drawn as the winning ticket for a model airplane raffle! Women Fly is a fun community event and there’s a day for each age group, so if you can attend, I encourage it once the time comes next year!

Here's a video Annabelle took of a robot going through some motions. Annabelle reports it wasn't being operated via remote, it "was just there, doing its thing."


HAMMING IT UP: We are still in our obsessed-with-Hamilton phase. A couple of nights ago, we tuned into a Public Broadcasting System program about the revolutionary musical.

I'll have CJ tell you a bit about it. 

One night, while our TV was tuned to our local PBS station, we watched the documentary Hamilton's America. Hamilton's America is a documentary about the making and success of Hamilton: An American Musical, a Broadway musical written by playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton's America came out in late 2016, approximately a year after the Broadway debut of Hamilton: An American Musical.

Throughout Hamilton's America, there was footage of Lin-Manuel Miranda during the development of Hamilton: An American Musical. Prior to the Broadway debut of Hamilton, Miranda had a piano in his house, which he noted was out of tune. At the time the documentary was finished, the piano was still not properly tuned.

If you have a PBS Passport, you can watch the documentary for free at PBS' website. Otherwise, you can watch a (poor-quality) upload on Vimeo. The documentary is fascinating, and is worth a watch if you have the time.

Here's a trailer for the program: https://youtu.be/_KsTjxKi5JE


NIHONGO: We continue plugging away at learning Japanese via Mango Languages.

Every time we follow a lesson, I am so impressed with how quickly the kids pick up the new words and phrases and how well they remember what we've already learned.

Conversely, I am mortified by how poorly I am doing. I mean seriously, NOT well at all.  I can't even remember the really important stuff, like asking where the bathroom is.