Calculating

COLLEGE PREP: We're gearing up 'round here for CJ to start Running Start (a state program where high school juniors and seniors can take college courses for free). One part of that is making sure you can qualify for college, and that involves placement tests. Therefore, today we concentrated on was a practice test pertaining to college math placement. (We found it on the Highline College website.)

Let's just say the test was a good reminder that practice is important. It's not that the kids didn't know how to do a lot of the problems, it was just that they hadn't done anything like s few of the test questions in awhile, so some rust needs to be knocked off. And practice can help that, right? For instance, we couldn't remember what the "FOIL" method is for solving an equation.

A quick Google reminded us that it's Firsts Outsides Inner, Lasts. This diagram from Wikipedia helps demonstrate the approach.

None of the math was particularly 'hard,' it was just a matter of familiarizing oneself with some terms. (After all, how often in real life do you calculate the area of a circle? Oh, and if you need to it's π*r-squared.

PARTING SHOT: Likely you already know about the dearly-departed Opportunity rover. Its mission on Mars was declared complete on Feb. 13, 2019, after NASA scientists could no longer communicate with the rover (following an historic dust storm on the Red Planet).

Right up until 'the end,' Opportunity continued to conduct important science operations. For instance, over the span of 29 days last spring, Opportunity documented a 360-degree panorama from multiple images taken from its final resting spot, Perseverance Valley. The photo is now known as "Opportunity Legacy Pan."

This image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018. The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU 

Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward on the inner slope of the western rim of Endurance Crater. The valley is about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavor's rim to its floor.

"This final panorama embodies what made our Opportunity rover such a remarkable mission of exploration and discovery," Opportunity project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a press release.. "To the right of center you can see the rim of Endeavor Crater rising in the distance. Just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent from over the horizon and weave their way down to geologic features that our scientists wanted to examine up close. And to the far right and left are the bottom of Perseverance Valley and the floor of Endeavour crater, pristine and unexplored, waiting for visits from future explorers."

In all, Opportunity spent nearly 15 years on the surface of Mars, exploring.