WEEKS TO COME: Today was low-key for MPA. We kept busy, but close to 'campus.' We worked on a long math review chapter (lots of decimals and common deliminators). We wrote haikus about the library. We baked four kinds of cookies and made fondant and royal icing, and the kids had yoga. We had frozen yogurt for lunch and listened to "The Wall," CJ's latest musical obsession.
Oh, and speaking of CJ and music, at about 6:20 this a.m I looked over at him and he was standing and kind of twitching to and fro, with the epicenter somewhere in the vicinity of his hips. I asked him what the heck we was doing and without missing a beat he replied, "The Harlem Shake." Nice. Never too early to start your day off with the latest dance craze. Gangnam Style is sooo last month.
My hands were covered in batter, frosting or some other sticky mess most of the day, so I didn't take any photos. Sorry. Hopefully the multiple dozen I took yesterday bide me some time.
We've got a busy couple of weeks ahead. For instance, March 18-22 is Solar Week. It's a chance to interact live with solar scientists from NASA. Check out the Solar Week Web site for daily curriculum, games, activities and more: http://www.solarweek.org/cms/
And the following week, it's our annual participation in United Way of King County's Hunger Action Week, where we'll live on the grocery budget of a family receiving food stamps. It's always an excellent math exercise and a great reminder of the challenges so many face every single week. Check it out here: http://www.uwkc.org/news-events/event-calendar/haw/
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
My Little Pony Mural
FINALLY FINISHED: We started this 'little' paint project back in December. Annabelle decided she wanted a My Little Pony Themed mural on her walls. So, that's what we did.
We started by finding Ponies she liked, and making composite scenes of them in different My Little Pony backgrounds. We were going for a 360-wrap around look.
We painted in fits and bursts, 15 minutes here, an hour there. Everything had so many colors and layers, it was a slow-going process. That, and Annabelle is an exacting task master. I can't tell you how many nights I was summoned into Annabelle's room at bedtime for some critiquing and change orders - everything from eyelashes to Cutie Marks (you know, those little icons on the ponies' flanks). But that was OK. Nothing wrong with wanting things right.
And, of course, we had to have little details, like Annabelle's custom-designed "Honey Bee," (her alter pony ego, as her nickname's Bee). And there's also a CJ pony, of course.
The closet doors vexed me for a couple weeks. I just didn't know what to do with them. Finally, one day, when looking at MLP photos online, I saw a map of Equestria (their homeland). Bingo! Painting that was a bear, but fun. On the other closet door, we used magnetic paint and made a blank billboard, so Annabelle can post her art in Ponyville.
Here's hoping she continues to love My Little Pony for at least a few more months. ...
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Trail and Textbooks
SUNDAY SOOS: Still playing catch up reporting our weekend activities. Sunday afternoon we wanted to go down to Kent to shop at Winco (yes, it's worth the drive), but decided to make more than a grocery-getting outing of it. So, we loaded up two dogs, a scooter and a bike and hit the nearby Soos Creek Trail.
Per the King County Parks Web site, Soos Creek Trail "features a gentle grade in a natural setting suitable for leisurely strolls, bicycle rides and horse rides." If only we had a horse ...The trail is 6 miles long. I think we hopped on about the halfway point.
There were a few points of visual interest though - mostly provided by interesting root structures like this. ...
When we set out from home it was super sunny, but by the time we were walking, the sun was struggling to break through a cloud cover.
I was curious how Soos Creek got its name. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I was able to learn it's what the Skopamish Indians called their village at the mouth of the Green River. Settlers of the area spelled it Suise originally, but over the years it morphed to Soos. A lot of the land along Soos Creek used to be owned by the railroad company, but in the 1970s, King County Park System acquired it.
HOW THINGS WORK: On Monday we started our new/second Coursera class. It's called "How Things Work 1," taught by Dr. Lou Bloomfield of the University of Virginia.
Monday was the first day of the course, and we decided to dive right in. First, I went to the homework section to see what we were up against. This week, it was just one quiz, but unlike our astrobiology class, and more like the real world, you only get ONE attempt at the quiz. That freaked the kids out a bit. I told them we'd be fine. Probably. We decided to find out by watching all 7 video lectures on the topic of skating for Week 1.
We learned all sorts of cool physic-y stuff. :) We learned about inertia (that an object at rest tends to remain at rest, and an object in motion tends to remain in motion). We learned Newton's First Law of Motion, that velocity is a vector measurement of the rate/amount and direction of motion, or the rate at which an object's position is changing with time. We learned that acceleration is the rate at which an object's velocity is changing with time. We now know a bit about net force, mass, and Newton's Second Law of Motion (F = ma).
After watching all the videos, it was test time. We were a little nervous since it was the 'first day of school' for this class. I couldn't help but wonder if we'd be better prepared for the test if we owned the textbook to go along with the class, so I followed the link and .... prepare for digression. GOOD GOD -- $172?!?!? It's a non fiction book, containing physics facts - principles which have been written/known about for decades/centuries - and these facts are readily available for a WHOLE lot less (like FREE) from any number of sources. I mean $172 damn dollars?! I like books. I buy books. I have copies of first edition books, and books autographed by astronauts that cost a FRACTION of what the publisher is charging for this textbook. This book is not bundled with a CD or a new car or anything ... Naturally, I checked out the electronic version of the book as an alternative. That has to be lots cheaper, right? I mean it costs the publisher NOTHING to print or ship. But wait, it's not even on sale. You can BORROW (that's right, not own, but BORROW) an electronic version of the text for a year for $52. FIFTY TWO DOLLARS! For a loaner PDF about physics 101 ($1 goes to charity, BTW).
Curious, I went to Amazon and searched for "introduction to physics" books. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of them, starting at under a dollar for electronic books, and lots and lots of titles for around $10-$20 if you don't mind 'used' (which often means virtually untouched but previously owned). I did find I could buy a used copy of How Things Work for $39. That's more like it.
I read a couple of articles about the cost of textbooks. A story in the Huffington Post says the American Enterprise Institute a think tank, reports textbook prices are 812 percent higher than they were in 1978. The textbooks' price even outpaced the 559 percent increase in tuition and fees over that time period.
All this said, I realize the irony of me complaining about the price of a textbook for a wonderful, free class. ... Back to that class. ...
So, we took the Week 1 quiz. It was challenging, which is good. It wasn't just a matter of regurgitation concepts or examples we'd heard in the videos. Rather, we had to take the info we learned and demonstrate that we understood it, as the questions presented scenarios and we had to figure out how/which laws of physics were involved. I was THRILLED when I scored a 9 out of 10. CJ scored the same and was near tears. He was mad because he knew the right answer to the one he missed, he just checked the wrong box. Annabelle was our only perfect score of the day.
SO CLOSE: I put probably 3 hours into the never-ending My Little Pony mural today. As a result, never-ending has changed to damn-near done. I should be finished tomorrow, with 30 minutes of work, tops. Hooray! Photos to come.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Polar Science Saturday!
PACSCI POLAR SCIENCE WEEKEND! Saturday we enjoyed what has become an annual event for us - attending NASA-sponsored Polar Science Weekend at Pacific Science Center. It's a great place to meet face-to-face with all sorts of scientists with interesting specialties.
We got there as soon as the event opened - 10 a.m., and for the next 90 minutes we made our way between booths. One of our favorite destinations is the narhwhal zone!
There, the kids got to pretend they were 'unicorns of the sea,' by strapping on tusks. Then, they were ready to play a narwhal migration game.
The kids braved the salinity taste test, got their hands on some glacial ice,and learned about how glaciers form and move.
There were a number of booths that addressed the issue of climate change on creatures of the arctic. In this "Seal Sleuths" game, the kids saw the dramatic effect disappearing ice had on seals' survival.
Less ice means more seals into the drink. Poor seals. :(
Tacoma's Point Defiance Zoo had info about arctic animals, including musk ox and polar bears. CJ and Annabelle checked out how their paws measured up to a polar bear's.
At a booth staffed by UW grad students, the kids played a game which demonstrated the delicate balance of the ice in the arctic. There were two types of squares, blue for water and white for ice. At the game's start there was an equal amount of ice and water. The kids took turn drawing cards, and those had real world things that can happen on them, like water getting warmer, volcanoes erupting, sunlight reflection, and meteorite strikes. They would flip the squares to white or blue, based on the pro- or con-ice cards and watch the domino effect.
At about 11:30, it was time for us to head to the IMAX theater for a movie, "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure."
Ernest Shakleton's expedition to Antarctica (1914-1916) in hopes of being the first man to cross that continent is, quite possibly, the greatest survival story of all time. It's the story of 28 men who worked as a team to overcome a series of monumental obstacles in order to survive nearly two years of being stranded in the Antarctic.
I read the book "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" in college (named after the ship that became icebound, stranding the explorers), so I was very familiar with the trials the men faced. (Here's a photo of the doomed vessel, taken by the crew's photographer, Frank Hurley.)
The story was new to the rest of the family, and they were mightily amazed and impressed.
Afterward, we went back upstairs for some more exploring of our own. Even though they remembered (not fondly) the salty water taste from last year, the kids each braves a salinity taste test. They also checked out their temperatures with the aid of a heat-sensing FLIR camera.
They also got to use a probe to measure the temp of ice, dry ice and sand.
As we were making our way out of the event, we happened upon Live Science show starting. Lucky us! The show featured Dr. Mike Steele, an esteemed oceanographer from the University of Washington He specializes in the Arctic Ocean, and he conducted a number of fun experiments, most of them using liquid nitrogen.
After the show, the liquid nitrogen was poured out into the PacSci fountains. That was quite a spectacle of frosty fog!
HAPPY BERTH DAY: This weekend, we eagerly awaited reports from the International Space Station regarding the approach and connection of SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
Launched Friday morning, Dragon's thrusters had trouble once it reached orbit, which made for some anxious moments/hours. Fortunately, the crack SpaceX crew worked through the trouble and by Saturday, Dragon had been given permission to approach the station.
The approach and capture of Dragon by the ISS's Canada arm happened in the wee small ours of Sunday morning our time. Here's a video of the operation.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=160534571
On board the ISS, on Sunday, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had this to say about Dragon's arrival: "What a day! Reached and grabbed a Dragon, berthed her to Station and opened the hatch to find fresh fruit, notes from friends and peanut butter."
HAT TIP: On Saturday morning, we tipped our red-and-white-striped Cat-in-the-Hat type hats to Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Mar. 2 is his birthday, and we've taken to observing it annually with green eggs and ham. Newsflash - the kids actually ATE the eggs this year!
Friday, March 1, 2013
Dragon Drama
START YOUR ENGINES: "This is Mission Control ..."
At 6:30 this morning, those four words crackling through the TV speaker woke CJ and Annabelle from a deep slumber to a sitting-bolt-upright position. I have trained them well. :)
We started our day with a launch at the Space Coast. Unfortunately, we weren't there in person, but we had it on two big screens and the computer. Good enough!
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off right at 7:10 our time, per schedule. Picture perfect! We watched it progress through main engine cut-off (MECO), second stage cut off and Dragon separation. A minute and a half later, it was time for the solar arrays to deploy. Everything seemed to go off without a hitch. Until ... live coverage was abruptly ended. Odd. And so I turned to the Twitterverse to see what the heck was happening.
Immediately, multiple Tweets about the solar arrays not deploying. How quickly nominal had changed to 'anomaly.' Uh oh.
Without the solar arrays, Dragon would have 18 hours of battery power before it became completely dead in orbit. Not good.
Soon, theories and rumors were flying. Based on what I read from sources I trust, I quickly came to believe
the root of the problem wasn't the solar arrays, but rather that three of four thruster pods had failed to initiate. Without those, Dragon didn't have the proper attitude to deploy the solar shields.
Pretty soon Mr. SpaceX himself, Elon Musk, started filling in blanks for us. Smart move. Why not dictate your own story?
Elon Musk
Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override.
Holding on solar array deployment until at least two thruster pods are active
About to pass over Australia ground station and command inhibit override
Thruster pod 3 tank pressure trending positive. Preparing to deploy solar arrays.
Solar array deployment successful
Attempting bring up of thruster pods 2 and 4
And then 4-5 hours later, after the first 'uh oh' Tweet
Pods 1 and 4 now online and thrusters engaged. Dragon transitioned from free drift to active control. Yes!!
Thruster pods one through four are now operating nominally. Preparing to raise orbit. All systems green.
Orbit raising burn successful. Dragon back on track.
And then this evening
Just want to say thanks to @NASA for being the world's coolest customer. Looking forward to delivering the goods!
Would also like to thank @USAirForce for allowing us to use their long range comm system for Dragon in free drift.
All in all, it was clearly a very cooperative effort with a whole lot of highly competent, can-do types bringing their A game, collaborating to work a problem- and solve it! Bravo!
The berthing with the ISS has been delayed a day, but so what!? Not too many hours ago, the mission was in jeopardy of being an abysmal failure.
CELEBRATING SEUSS: No doubt about what's on the menu for breakfast tomorrow morning: Green eggs and ham! March 2 is Theodor Geisel's birthday. We've also got a big ol' stack of Seuss books for the kids to read tonight and tomorrow!
ON THE MOVE: Between programming, dance and acting classes, the kids had time to get some exercise. Here they are on their 'couch' at a West Seattle park.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Ready for Liftoff!
READY FOR LIFT OFF: This morning we watched a live press conference all about tomorrow's launch of SpaceX's CRS-2 mission, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule, destination ISS!
If successful, this will be SpaceX's second unmanned cargo mission to the ISS. We watched their first ISS mission last October, and boy were we excited when it succeeded!
The rocket will take off at 7:10 am. Pacific time from the Kennedy Space Center. It will be webcast live, with commentary from SpaceX corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, CA, at spacex.com/webcast, and NASA's Kennedy Space Center at www.nasa.gov/nasatv. NASA TV's pre-launch coverage begins at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time. SpaceX's Web cast will begin approximately 40 minutes before launch.
CRS-2 is the second of 12 missions NASA has contracted with SpaceX. Not only will the mission deliver much needed supplies and fascinating science experiments to the ISS, it's also bringing home precious cargo. It's scheduled to return on Mar. 25, bringing hom about 2,668 pounds of cargo.
I was so happy that our new license place arrived on launch eve! Check it out ...
HAIKU HULLABALU: March is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate that, the Seattle Public Library is inviting its card holding patrons to enter its first haiku contest. Entries must be three lines with a total of 17 syllables or fewer, in traditional, contemporary or innovative haiku form. The theme is "Celebrate the library in your life."
Entries are accepted Mar. 4-15. I told the kids I am going to have them write several haikus on the topic, and before the deadline, they can pick their favorite one for submission.
CJ and Annabelle took their first go at it today.
LOCAL HISTORY: We had to take the Honda to get a slow leak fixed in one of its tires at the Ballard Les Schawb today. While the tire was being tended to, we schlepped around the wet, dirty 'mean' streets (the least pretty part of Ballard to be sure). We managed to turn part of it into a history lesson. :) Underneath a seedy Safeway on 15th and Market, there are photos depicting early Ballard history. Here, the kids try to do their best to look like Capt. William R. Ballard, for whom the neighborhood is named.
We also read a couple of books today in order to return them on time. "Trout Are Made of Trees" might sound like a preposterous title, but as the story progressed, it showed how leaves fall into streams, they decompose and are fed upon by bacteria, and the decaying leaves become food for insects, which get eaten by small fish, which get eaten by larger fish, and before you know it, trout are made of trees.
We also read the wonderful "Jack's Path of Courage The Life of John F. Kennedy." Written by Doreen Rappaport, it follows JFK from his boyhood through his assassination-and his legacy. CJ and Annabelle knew, of course, JFK was a U.S. president, but today they learned he came from a competitive family, was an excellent swimmer, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and a war hero, as well. Rappaport did a wonderful job of covering a lot of ground in a relative few pages.
I love the cover of this book (illustrated by Matt Tavares). It is a lovely color portrait of JFK and nothing else - no title, no authors, no nothing. It's very striking. We spent a couple minutes talking about why a book like this could get away with not having a title, and how the portrait of such an iconic figure just instantly telegraphs exactly what the book is about. And the cover's just the start. All of the illustrations really capture JFK at milestones throughout his life.
When we turned to the page where JFK is riding in a convertible next to Jackie in her pink pillbox hat, CJ sucked in his breath. He knew what was coming. :/
Here's a trailer for the book. ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2JaVJ3NkZ-U
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Mars Mission
I love how the Needle blends in with the masts in this photo.
PIONEERS: For awhile now, the Twitterverse has been abuzz with news of a billionaire with a Mars mission on his mind. Specifically, Dennis Tito and "Inspiration Mars "A Mission for America."
By all accounts, Tito is a brilliant dude. After watching all of this morning's press conference, I am sold on Inspiration Mars' vision.
The plan is a “fast, free-return” mission which passes within 100 miles of Mars (without landing) before
returning safely to Earth.
As Tito and his pointed out this morning, the mission they have planned will be built around existing, proven low-Earth orbit (LEO) space transportation systems and technologies. For example, IM's capsule will be dispatched form Earth orbit with a single Mars trajectory burn (simple, right?), and additional maneuvers will only consist of minor course corrections, using the gravitational influence of Mars to “slingshot” the vehicle onto a return course to Earth (easy, no?).
It's a long damn flight (510 days there and back), so in addition to the capsule, there will be an inflatable habitat module launched after deploy and detached prior to re-entry.
Graphic: Inspiration Mars
(This is not that far-fetched. Right now, Bigelow is developing inflatable modules for the ISS.)The fact that it's not a landing mission makes it ever so much easier (and lighter). The reason 2018 is the magic number is that represents the shortest duration roundtrip mission to Mars, and it coincides when solar flares are supposed to be at a low, given our sun's 11-year weather cycle. Flying within 1-- miles of Mars, with a flight plan "just like a boomerang ... we don't need any propulsive maneuvers. ... It's really simple," Tito said with conviction.
During the presser, we heard from Taber MacCallum, chief technology officer of Inspiration Mars
Foundation, Dr. Jonathan Clark, chief medical officer of Inspiration Mars Foundation and associate professor of Neurology and Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Jane Poynter, president and chairwoman of Paragon Space Development Corporation, which is leading the development of the
Environmental Control and Life Support System for Inspiration Mars. Poynter spent two years living inside Biosphere 2, where she managed the design and operations of the farming section.
Inspiration Mars isn't going it alone. In addition to a number of private sector companies on board, in the press conference, they reported they have been working closely with NASA, and that NASA has been very
http://inspirationmars.org/
During the press conference, Tito characterized the 2018 flight as 'low hanging fruit' and 'a pretty easy mission,' relatively speaking.
The downside? There's no way to abort after launch.
One of the panel today likened the mission to "a Lewis and Clark trip," where things are kept as simple as possible." And then there's the leap of faith part as well. "It's like "throwing your heart out in front of you and then racing to catch it," he said.
BUDGET HEROES: Sequestration is big in the news right now. I'm trying to avoid the news right now, because it makes me so damn mad.
That said, I thought the kids might like a crack at fixing the national budget. Hell, they couldn't do any worse than the current congress, right? So, we hopped onto a game called "Budget Hero" by America Public Media. In the game, the kids got to make some tough choices. It was interesting listening to it all go down.
At one point CJ pondered, "Should I eliminate deductions for state and local taxes?"
And when Annabelle had the chance, she increased NASA's budget by 50 percent. Good girl! :) (However, I told her that as a result some people will starve, but them's the breaks, LOL.)
When presented with a choice, CJ said, "Of course not. I'm not going to drill for oil in the Arctic. That's only going to kill everything that lives there."
"It's not going to kill everything immediately" Annabelle reasoned.
The game helped increase the kids' vocabulary. For instance, Annabelle asked, "What's 'infrastructure'?"
Right after submitting her first budget proposal a siren sounded and a message flashed across Annabelle's screen saying, "Your kids called. They want their future back." Ouch! Perhaps she was a bit too liberal. ;)
CJ pained over whether or not, "Should I raise Medicare eligibility to 67?"
"That's exactly what I did!" Annabelle exclaimed with way too much glee for my taste.
In the end, they both balanced their budgets, and the future called to say 'thank you.' Well done. Now maybe they can talk some sense into the ignoramuses in Congress.
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