Of Pi, Protests, and a Phenomenal Physicist

IN REMEMBRANCE: Tuesday night, shortly before midnight our time, we heard breaking news that world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking had died at his home in Cambridge, England.

Hawking wound up dying on Pi Day (3.14) and Einstein's birthday. Seems fitting, somehow. 

I feel so, *so* fortunate that we were able to share the same space with Hawking on a special evening back in 2012, as part of the (now-defunct) Seattle Science Festival.  The photo below is terrible of the kids, but it was a terrific night!

Diagnosed with ALS when he was just 19, it's amazing that Hawking lived as long as he did. (To think that as a young man, he was counseled not to waste money on college, since he'd be dying soon!)

If you haven't seen it yet, we recommend "The Theory of Everything." It was a compelling biopic about a brilliant man.

REJECTING THE SILENCE: Wednesday morning, there was a nationwide school walkout for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. across every time zone to protest lawmakers' inaction to do more than tweet "thoughts and prayers" in response to the gun violence plaguing U.S. schools. The walkouts were primarily student-led. 

We didn't have a school to walk out of Wednesday morning, but wanted to mark the occasion in some way. Silence didn't seem like a good way to honor the victims, as there has been too much silence about school shootings. Instead, we chose to read aloud an article from CNN about the victims of the latest mass school shooting, in Florida. Among the 17 dead were kids as young as 14, and adults who died trying to protect children. 

The article is overwhelming, of course. Vibrant lives senselessly snuffed out in moments by a disturbed young male who had obvious warning signs, which people around him had reported. And yet, 17 are dead, anyway. How often has this scenario been repeated?  How many more times will it be carried out? Why are mass school shootings so common in America?

Obviously, there are more questions than answers, and the answers are complicated, which is part of why people continue to send #ThoughtsandPrayers and then just move along.

PI PARTY: On Wednesday, we helped organize a Pi Party. It wound up being big fun, with 80 plus attendees, I'd guess.

The star of the show was a pi(e) potluck. There were probably 20-plus pies contributed, as well as several pizza pies. 

We also shared some Pi Day videos with the group, including an entertaining BrainPOP video (https://www.brainpop.com/math/geometryandmeasurement/pi/) and one from PBS Kids. 

We had a recite pi contest, seeing how many digits students could manage to memorize. A friend of the kids' recited pi to the 118th digit, making him the grand champion. The runner up made it to 108, also mighty impressive. (CJ and Annabelle just listened, rather than participating.)

We had cute prizes on hand for the pi reciting people. Right after Valentine's Day, the kids and I were in Wal-Mart and checked out their post-holiday clearance. We spotted these adorable pie slices and I thought, "Bingo! Perfect Pi Day prizes!"

Deeply discounted, they were 74 cents apiece. Score!

We brought pizza to the party, but didn't bake any pies. Instead, we chose to make cookies that look like pie slices. They were fun, and it was pretty easy to pump out a few dozen of them!

The miniature non-pie pies were a hit. I'd definitely make them again.

Sweet Stuff

SQUIRRELING AROUND: Here were are on Tuesday, still playing catch up from last Friday. 

Friday was a rainy day, but our morning was made brighter by a fun field trip to a local gelato establishment. 

I'll let Annabelle tell you more about it. 

Friday at Nutty Squirrel Gelato in Magnolia, I learned how gelato is made, what differentiates it from ice cream, and why they use fresh ingredients.

Nutty Squirrel is a family-owned business with three locations- Maple Valley, Phinney Ridge, and the Magnolia location we went to. The store has a pleasant atmosphere, although it's rather small. They slow-churn small batches of gelato from milk that are shipped from Smith Brothers farms at most 48 hours after the cows were milked, resulting in the freshest gelato possible.

They gave us samples of some unflavored gelato that finished churning as we walked into the room, which tasted like delicious, creamy milk. Afterwards, we got a small lesson on what gelato means ("frozen" in Italian) and why they're dedicated to using little no no artificial ingredients. They allowed us to decorate our own small bowls of vanilla gelato and everyone got free coupons for one free regular-sized scoop whenever we wanted! Nutty Squirrel gelato was great experience and I recommend trying their gelato - it's delicious, and you help support a local business!

I loved how these cones were artfully arranged, and the (fake) spilled ice cream prompted many a smile from our field trip group.

 A couple of tasty looking flavors ...

Below is a very pleased CJ with his creation.

 And Annabelle was plenty happy with hers, too!

Fire & Water

HOT TICKET: Need some more sunshine in your life? Hop on board the Parker Solar Probe. It's NASA's first mission to actually touch the sun.

Launching this summer, "The Parker Solar Probe will travel through the sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star," reports NASA.

The probe will use Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years, gradually orbiting  closer to the sun. Eventually, the spacecraft "will fly through the sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.9 million miles to our star’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before," according to NASA. The probe is expected to fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.

To survive this extreme exploration, the spacecraft and its instruments will be protected from the sun by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield, which will need to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F (1,377 C). Hot stuff!

None other than Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is encouraging people to join the mission. 
I To send your name to the sun, follow this link: http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/The-Mission/Name-to-Sun/. Make sure you do so before April 27, 2018!  The launch window is July 31 to Aug.  19, 2018.

HISTORY REVISITED:  On March 5, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen made a major announcement on his Facebook page (and elsewhere). His crew on Research Vessel Petrel discovered the wreckage of the USS Lexington. 

For the past few years, Allen, owner of the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington, has used some of his vast resources to rediscover important vessels and artifacts from wars of yesteryear.  

“To pay tribute to the USS Lexington and the brave men that served on her is an honor,” said Paul Allen in a press release. “As Americans, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who served and who continue to serve our country for their courage, persistence and sacrifice.”

One of the first U.S. aircraft carriers ever built,“Lady Lex” was found about two miles (3,000 meters) below the surface, on the floor of the Coral Sea, more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia.

“Lexington was on our priority list because she was one of the capital ships that was lost during WWII,” said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Allen, in a press release. “Based on geography, time of year and other factors, I work with Paul Allen to determine what missions to pursue. We’ve been planning to locate the Lexington for about six months and it came together nicely.”

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about the discovery. 

Two days ago, Microsoft co-founder Paul Gardner Allen discovered the remains of the USS Lexington (CV-2) (USSLCV-2), an American military aircraft carrier mostly know for being used during World War II. The USSLCV-2, which received two battle stars by the time it sank, was sunk on 8 May 1942, after being attacked by the Japanese military.

The USSLCV-2 was 888 feet long, and staffed approximately 2,951 crewmen on the day it sank. The USSLCV-2 sank largely due to major explosions in the craft's hangar that began during the early afternoon,

The wreckage of the USSLCV-2 was found in the Coral Sea, over 500 miles off Australia's east coast. This follow's Allen's discovery of the USS Indianapolis in August 2017, another historic shipwreck discovery. Allen's company, Vulcan Inc, uploaded an informative video to their YouTube channel about the shipwreck.

On the day the ship went down, 216 of its crewmen were killed.

Lady Lex went down with 35 planes. So far, #RVPetrel has found 11 of them. 

Launched in 1925, the USS Lexington was originally commissioned as a battlecruiser, but was launched as an aircraft carrier in 1925. She took part in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942) alongside with the USS Yorktown, against three Japanese carriers. This battle was the first carrier versus carrier fight in history, and marked the first time Japanese forces suffered a permanent setback in its advances on New Guinea and Australia. https://youtu.be/-K-V_ah6IIs

Read more here: https://www.paulallen.com/uss-lexington-wreck-located-rv-petrel/#GeZL2ldcK2jzkjg0.99

See more in this longer version of the video. ...

Apollo Revisited

FLIGHTY: Friday evening, Annabelle had a class at The Museum of Flight. As were readying to take her, it occurred to me I was tired of just dropping her off there for various activities, and that it had been way too long since we paid the place a visit. So, off we went, if only for an hour or so.

I especially wanted to see the museum's revamped Apollo exhibit. This vignette at its entrance made me fee right at home!

Video from the Apollo 11 moon landing was playing 'live' on the TV screen. This Cronkite quote on the wall made me chuckle. 

One of the biggest parts of the exhibit - literally - is a old F-1 engine. It dwarfed the kids.

 Back in the day, five of these would have been mounted on the rocket.

While the engine above never left Earth, other artifacts on display sure did. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his team, who found them on the ocean floor.

 This F-1 definitely looks a little worse for the wear, having spent more than 40 years at sea.

 And below is a hypergolic manifold that played a role in the Apollo 12 mission.

All in all, it was an impressive display. If I were queen, though, I'd have the space not quite so dark, and the glass covering the artifacts not quite so reflective. It's kind of a photographer's nightmare in there.

 After hours, Annabelle attended a class at the museum. I'll let her tell you more about it. ...

At the Museum of Flight, I recently took a 3D modeling class with the Amelia’s Aero Club group. The class was 2 hours long and focused around learning to use TinkerCAD, a 3D modeling program which I’ve had experience with before at the Living Computer Museum + Labs. The program uses simple shapes and bright colors to make 3D modeling accessible to almost everyone. It can take a little while to get used to more advanced features like merging shapes and aligning them, but the learning curve in general is very small. The two projects we made during the class were a small warm-up rocket consisting of 4 shapes, and for the main project a larger airplane that we got to customize at the end. The class had a few difficulties connecting to the internet, being in a concrete room, but most of the time the program ran smoothly. Since I was already familiar with TinkerCAD, I was able to keep up with our instructor rather quickly. It seemed like other students were doing well even if they had never used TinkerCAD before.

ANT INVASION: We are in charge of a monthly birthday bulletin board. Below is what we came up with for March. We were trying to think of something spring-y, but weren't feeling any of the rain or flower ideas. We thought briefly about bees and ladybugs, but decided it was too early for that. I said, "What about ants?" as they've already started showing up around our place. 

So an ant farm it was.  I love Annabelle's little ants - they have so much personality! CJ helped cut them and the ant farm out.

The ant farm vignettes included a music room, a movie theater, an art gallery (complete with MonAnt Lisa and Antmerican Gothic, a ballet studio, a library, and, of course, ants have to have a picnic.

 Annabelle said it was fun drawing creatures with four arms for a change.

Stories

POWERFUL STORY:  There's a program in Seattle called TeenTix. It's phenomenal. Teens 13-19 have access to amazing shows throughout the Seattle Metropolitan area for just $5 a ticket. These are often $50+ seats. 

I signed the kids up as soon as they were eligible, but we hadn't yet used the TeenTix program until this weekend. I received an email last week about a special presentation of "The Journal of Ben Uchida" Citizen 13559" at Seattle Children's Theatre. We have seen many a great production at SCT, and jumped on the opportunity for four tickets for a total of $20 to the show. An added bonus? There was a catered Japanese dinner for FREE following the show, as part of an effort to facilitate conversation on the topic of the U.S> WWII era interment camps.

I'll let CJ tell you a little bit about the play.

In 1941, the Japanese government attacked the American military station of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In response, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, requiring American citizens of Japanese ancestry to relocate to various internment camps around the country, bringing only what they could carry. The last of the camps did not close until March 1946, several months after World War II ended.

On March 2nd, I attended a play at the Seattle Children's Theatre, titled The Journal of Ben Uchida (TJBU). TJBU primarily follows Ben Uchida, a fictional character interned in Mirror Lake internment camp (a fictional camp) alongside his family members and several other families.

After the end of the play, the cast members gathered back on stage to pose questions to the audience (for example: "What would you do with property that you couldn't carry with you?") After posing the questions, the audience was invited to ask questions. The questions were mainly regarding the special effects used in the production.

After the end of the play, fifty of the audience members (including me) were invited to an upstairs Japanese dinner, where discussion about the themes in the play and how they are relevant to modern society were encouraged. At our table, an example of a discussion point that I brought up was as follows:

In Germany, sites of concentration camps still exist, and are regularly visited by Germans and tourists alike. Meanwhile, In America, the sites of various camps built for Japanese-American internment are largely ignored, assuming they still even exist. Heather (a diner at our table) pointed out that one of the camps in Alaska had apparently been bulldozed to make way for a parking lot. I suggested this disparity may be due to how history is written by the winners, and while the German government may have been forced to preserve the camp sites post-war, the American government chose to slip the Japanese-American internment camps under the rug.

The play was riveting. The story of internment camps is not new to us. We've seen George Takei's "Allegiance,"  attended Densho events, and read about the unsavory history online. But this production was SO powerful to the point of being overwhelming at times.

Below, CJ chats with actors following the production.

LIFT OFF: About 9:30 at night on March 5, we watched coverage of HISPASAT 30W-6, a SpaceX mission involving a Falcon 9 launch of the Hispasat 30W-6 satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). The launch was from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The Hispasat 30W-6 satellite.

Per a SpaceX press release, "Hispasat 30W-6 (previously Hispasat 1F) will be located at 30º W and serve as a replacement for the Hispasat 30W-4 (former Hispasat 1D) satellite, providing television, broadband, corporate networks and other telecommunications solutions. Built on the SSL 1300 satellite platform, Hispasat 30W-6 is expected to have a useful life of 15 years with 10.5 kW power and a multi-mission payload distributed across 40 Ku band transponders, 6 Ka band beams and 10 C band transponders."

Unfortunately, due to unfavorable weather conditions in the recovery area off of Florida’s Atlantic Coast, SpaceX had to forgo attempting to land Falcon 9’s first stage after launch on their "Of Course I Still Love You" ship.

Icing and More

GROUND FLOOR: Yesterday morning, the kids and I were working three computers and at least four browsers, targeting the Ticketmaster website. Our goal? Potentially getting in on the ground floor of a National Hockey League team coming to the Emerald City.

Our efforts paid off, and within 10 minutes of the opportunity going on sale, we were "in."

In fact, a whole lot of people were in. Within short order, more than 10,000 season ticket deposits were made.  

What comes next remains to be seen. The NHL has not awarded the city a team. It's just speculation at this point. And the deposit means nothing, really, other than the maybe chance to get tickets. 

Oh well, at least we have maybe supposedly have a chance if we want. And they couldn't possibly go as long without winning a championship as the Mariners, right?

BTW, Seattle was the FIRST U.S. team ever to win the Stanley Cup, way back in 1917. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in the States.

By Alex Goykhman - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44669468

YOUNG ACTIVIST: Yesterday, CJ called the office of the governor of the state Washington twice. Why?

I'll let him tell you. ...

Yesterday, it came to my attention that a bill withholding information about various state legislators from the public was at Governor Inslee's desk. Specifically, the bill would have exempted the legislature from the Public Records Act, which, according to the Seattle Times, several members of the legislature have long claimed they are not bound by.

After I learned about this, a family friend and I agreed to call Governor Inslee's office to request that he veto the bill. After dialing the Inslee office's number, I was told to wait for a representative to respond to my call. After waiting, I was greeted by the voice of a representative and asked what I wanted to say.

I introduced myself as a constituent of Governor Inslee, and asked that he veto the bill withholding information about state legislators from the public. I was promptly told that a recording of my request would be played to Inslee later that day.

After walking around the field by Cascade with our friend and her dog Penny,  our friend asked if I wanted to call Inslee's office again. I agreed, and repeated the same requests made in my previous call to the Governor's office.

Later that day, Inslee vetoed the bill, in (what I consider to be) a victory for concerned Washingtonians like (our friend) and me. Reportedly, Inslee's office had received thousands of calls regarding the bill by the time he had vetoed it.

CJ clearly felt good about trying to do something positive for our state, and I'm proud of him for doing so.

FAR PARK: This morning, we resumed our Japanese studies. Some of the things we'll be working on in our next unit include important words and phrases for getting around. Here's a screen shot of the Mango Languages goals for our present unit. We were happy to see we are finally going to ask where the bathroom is. (We kind of thought that might be in the very first unit, and this is unit 14!)

FYI, おてあらい is a polite Japanese word for a restroom, and it literally means "a place where you wash your hands." We learned that when in Japan, the English characters "W.C." (water closet) or pictographs of a male and a female are often used to denote restrooms.

Another topic that came up today was Tokyo's  うえのこうえん, or Ueno Park. Curious, we quickly hopped away from Mango and onto websites where we could find maps and pictures of the park.

Turns out the sprawling urban oasis was established in 1873 on lands formerly belonging to the temple of Kan’ei-ji. 

Park grounds include major museums (including the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum for Western Art, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and the National Science Museum), a zoo, historic buildings, a zoo, and a 100-plus year old statue of Takamori Saigo. Saigo was a statesman credited with playing a pivotal role in the birth of modern Japan.

The park's northern part features over 8.800 mature trees, including a thousand cherry trees lining its main path. The Japanese National Tourism Organization has a video about those trees and their blossoms.

Overall, the park looks like a must-see if we're ever lucky enough to get to visit Japan.

Up and Over

Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

THERE IT GOES-S: This afternoon, we made a kind of unscheduled stop at Annabelle's learning center. We were there to install the monthly birthday bulletin board. Whilst there, Christian texted, reminding us of a NASA launch at 2 p.m. 

That was a bit of an 'oh no!' moment, as we've had trouble tuning in to NASA TV at that location before, troubles stemming from a combination of old software, child safety filters, and such. Ironic, given that nothing on NASA's channel is anything but educational, but things don't always make sense. ... Anyway, today we were happy the librarian was around, and she was able to help us get the launch coverage up and running.

My favorite part of watching launches in public places like that is that it's an instant outreach opportunity. There were three kids and one adult in the computer lab, and each one of them, ages about 3 to 50+, gathered 'round the monitors to watch the launch. 

They had questions, including, "Where is that?" (Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida.)

"Where is it going?"

It will be positioned in a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, in approximately two weeks, 

"What are they launching?"

It's carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, or GOES-S. The satellite will provide faster, more accurate and more detailed data, in almost real-time, to track storm systems, lightning, wildfires, coastal fog and other hazards that affect the western United States.

It wasn't the biggest rocket or splashiest mission, but still, four people got to see a rocket launch live today (via the web), and I think it's something they'll remember. 

CAN YOU DIG IT?:  Meanwhile, on Mars, Curiosity has been having a bit of a challenge.

Turns out the Mars Science Laboratory's drill has been broken for awhile now, its drill motor out of order.  

However, skookum engineers on Earth have been troubleshooting work-arounds. And on Feb. 26, Curiosity drilled into Red Planet rock for the first time in more than a year.

The hole bored was about 0.5 inches (1.3 centimeters) deep into a target rock during the trial run of a new, technique, NASA officials said.

"We're now drilling on Mars more like the way you do at home," Curiosity deputy project manager Steven Lee, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "Humans are pretty good at re-centering the drill, almost without thinking about it. Programming Curiosity to do this by itself was challenging — especially when it wasn't designed to do that."

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS