Physics Fun!

Play with these balls... What are they? Particles. See upcoming film on the Hutchison Effect

Advanced reading:

Measurement of density, sound velocity, surface tension, and viscosity of freely suspended supercooled liquids

Journal	International Journal of Thermophysics
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
ISSN	0195-928X (Print) 1572-9567 (Online)
Issue	Volume 16, Number 2 / March, 1995
DOI	10.1007/BF01441920
Pages	545-555
Subject Collection	Physics and Astronomy
SpringerLink Date	Friday, April 22, 2005

Physics using Balloons:
http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-41611.html

Watched the Eclipse? Add your comments!

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2007Aug28/image/TLE2007Aug28-GMT.GIF

Watch the eclipse. Check out the time in your time zone.
http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

Example:

10:37:00 p.m. Tuesday August 28, 2007 in GMT converts to
06:37:00 p.m. Tuesday August 28, 2007 in America/New_York

Daylight Saving Time is not in effect on this date/time in GMT
Daylight Saving Time is in effect on this date/time in America/New_York

Learn more:
http://www.mreclipse.com/Special/LEprimer.html

Click comments below and add your comment.

Ways to Fund College

An opportunity to help fund college for parents and students to discuss and decide if it is right for you:

PayPerPost is a unique way to fund college. It is a good way to improve writing skills, too. You can review a product, write about it and earn money ( get paid to blog). Once you have a blog, you can get it approved and can then start making money. You'll get the message, "You are our newest Postie..."

I am just such a new, "Postie." What I love best about PayPerPost, is that I get to write about new things. I signed up initially to help pay for my son's college and other expenses. I heard about PPP on a blog my son wrote and linked to .

There is a strong community at PayPerPost that I am just getting to know. I haven't made any friends yet, but, I believe I will soon. I have learned how to Blog, what a tag is, how to post links. I have updated my computer skills so that I know what the teen-agers are doing...

I hope you will try PayPerPost and get paid to blog! Then, tell your friends about it.

What are you going to do with all the money you earn!?!?!?! As for me, I am going to help fund my son's college and if any is left over, I will pay off any other outstanding bill(s). Once I am financially independent, I will set up a foundation involved in sustainability of the Earth and will also help fund scholarships, if I make enough.

Supercool Science!

Slit Science

Dragonflies on a summer afternoon...

An article on dragonflies, by Dr J, discussing reducing the global mosquito population while providing topic for art, science, literature and entertainment appeared in TIBU today. Here's the opening and you can follow the link to read more.

Dragonflies offer something for everyone. From techies to artists, children to grandparents, scientists to mosquito-haters, poets to myth-lovers. Most cultures have some stories on dragonflies. Here is a sampling of dragonfly ideas that I have personally selected to share.

For example, the digital dragonfly museum offers a wealth of information on dragonflies (... Based out of Texas A and M University, the museum lists all of these sections: Image Gallery (photos and scans sorted by species) Photos (by photographer) Life History (Ron Lyons´) Emergence Sequence Collection Records Damselflies of Texas Digital Dragonflies Nothing But Butterflies Insects & More Center Home Entomology Home Bioinformatics Page TAMU Insect Collection Other Links Awards. Truly a wealth of dragonfly information, with lots of pictures.

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (996 AD) lists things that are better in pictures, such as a snowstorm, and, things that no picture could do justice, such as a rose. Similarly,dragonfly pictures are beautiful, however, do not compare to the alluring beautiful colors as these insects, of the order Odonata, flit about above rivers, ponds and streams in the summer sunlight. That is something to experience first-hand, like chasing after fireflies on a summer evening. In fact one author has linked these insects in the book, Animal Stories from Bellona Island (Mungiki) by Rolf Kuschel (pg 110-111 c 1975, National Museum of Denmark). In it, the firefly and dragonfly go together to get water. Mythical qualities enter the story and the dragonfly ends up losing it’s lantern (http://casswww.ucsd.edu/personal/ron/C VNC/odonata/cultural_odonatology.html, accessed July 18, 2007).
Read more:
Dr-J, a user of thisisby.us, thought you would be interested in this content:
http://www.thisisby.us/register.php?r=2818
the_enchanting_world_of_dragonflies

The Enchanting World of Dragonflies
Reducing the global mosquito population while providing topic for art, science, literature and entertainment

Improving your writing and getting paid!

Here's a link to TIBU, a great site for improving your writing. Parents might want to check it out and use your value system before letting your children on the site, but there are many teens and college students, among others, writing there. Don't use any identifying information in user names, however and do stay aware of what your child does on-line. Enjoy.

http://www.thisisby.us/register.php?r=2818

Temperate Deforestation

http://www.forestsforever.org/logowordsthin1.gif
There's a website where you can get information on deforestation of the Sequoia's

Temperate deforestation is an important issue, even though you hear so much more about tropical deforestation. In my mind, I have a book about it. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

J

Jane Colden teaches Us

Jane Colden, heroine of the botanic world, and now famous for her, "garden." I went to Jane's garden. I saw plants that you used to find everywhere around where Jane and I grew up. Well, Jane, in what became Coldenham, and me in the Town of Wallkill. Well, we grew up in different time frames, but, we shared a passion for the plants in our region, and for the study of plants in general, botany.

So, I thought, what is so special about Jane's garden? Those are the plants found everywhere here. But , Jane had foresight. Because everywhere here is now full of cement and shopping malls and macadam and houses and apartment buildings and, everything but plants. Well, there are some landscaped plants, but, it's hard to find those, "ordinary," plants of Jane's garden.

Preserving native plants saves our environment. Maybe you can plant a copy of Jane's garden...or, of the Garden Jane would have made, had she grown up in your region. Do you know the native species? How could you find them out?

(c)2007 J. S. Shipman

Please don't play with Fireworks: Here's one Reason Why

http://community.livejournal.com/bayarea/2007/07/05/ tells of a girl who lost her arm in the Bay area. The father is offering a $10K reward for information.
Thank you,
Chris Isner [The dad]
chrisisner@hotmail.com

The reward might be nice, but, the arm is better. May the best surgeons rise to the task. "Blown to smithereens" is hard to fix.

Courage to the girl. Don't let anything stop you from becoming a success in life. Though traumatic, this is just a challenge to get beyond. You can!

Pour some Milk in each of Two Saucers

Pour some Milk in each of Two Saucers
And keep a group of children (or adults) busy all afternoon
by Dr-J

We all know about milk.. It's white, It has calcium. You drink it. Children will come up with more ideas about milk than grown-ups, often. So, you put out two saucers (Paper cake plates work fine.) and pour the milk. Then what? Discuss the milk, and , then?

Take some food coloring, pretending the saucer is an analog clock face, drop a drop at 12, 3, 6 and 9. Do not stir. Don't even move it. And, please don't shake the table.

Okay, so the milk sits there. And the colors sit there, though, they do spread out a tiny bit. Now, take just one drop of an effective dish detergent (I use Dawn or Palmolive) and drop it in the center. Light show... I won't tell you what happens you have to watch.

The key to staying busy is to come up with a hypothesis or educated guess as to why what happens happens. Of course, you can search the web...but my experience is that you come up with the wrong answer, even from sites describing this activity.

So, let's make it a real experiment...what hypotheses did you have? The fat content? The calcium? Diffusion? There must be magnets somewhere? Oh, great, we have hypotheses. How can we test them? How can we make an experiment. You see for our first experiment, the plain milk saucer just sat there. And, we can compare the saucer with the milk and colors and detergent to it. But, it isn't identical except for one factor because two factors are different: colors and detergent. So how can we set up a controlled experiment where we check only one factor.

You think it's fat? How can you check? I have done a series of these tests and so, I know now. But for you to know, trust me, you can't just read it on the internet. I did find one correct answer out of about 6000 I found on the topic.

The point is, you are doing science because you don't know. And, when you are doing science, that's when it's fun. Of course you have to be confident that your ideas are good...as good as anyone's, and, you have to think about what you are doing and why. You have another hypothesis? What is it? Oh, you think it is because of the acid. Hmm. What acid is in milk? Do you know other household acids? Oh, lemon juice...yes, yes. I see, vinegar. Do they have anything in common with milk?

How many saucers do you have out now?

(c)2007 J S. Shipman
See also: http://www.thisisby.us/pour_some_milk_in_each_of_two_saucers

Pour some Milk in each of Two Saucers
And keep a group of children (or adults) busy all afternoon

Enjoy!!!



(c)2007 J. S. Shipman

Update 1 Oct 2012:
Here is a link to a video that might be used by students to think about what is happening in the science activity and experiments discussed in this blogpost:
http://evl.vcsd.k12.ny.us/safevideos/Video.aspx?id=VGoJuLX3BQQ (Paper clips floating Scott Thompson, Wisconsin Public School System, and, ExpertVillage.com (Source:  http://evl.vcsd.k12.ny.us/safevideos/ Video.aspx?id=VGoJuLX3BQQ, Accessed 1 Oct 2012)).  Can you think about how it might be related?

(c)2012 J S Shipman

Drive Safely

Summer has a lot of distractions. I was stopped at a red light. People ahead of me were stopped. People beside me were stopped. The person behind me walloped me. I ended up in the hospital. I hurt. All because the driver didn't pay attention.

People driving cars need to pay attention. It is a responsibility. If the driver just tapped my bumper that's one thing. But to go at the speed he was going along Memorial Drive? Of course someone would get hurt.

Remember you could get hurt. People's children, maybe your children...could get hurt. So, please focus when you drive.

Have a good summer.

(c)2007 J. S. Shipman

Car Accident Injury - offering information and locating available services for accident victims.

The Fish are moving North---Chesapeake Bay Crabs now NYC Crabs

The Fish are moving North
Chesapeake Bay Crabs now NYC Crabs
by Dr-J
in non-fiction> opinion
on Jul. 05, 2007 at 08:25am

Here's something to read. Here's the link.

http://www.thisisby.us/register.php?r=2818

You can write there, too. It can be a creative rainy day activity.

Doing What's Right

Whenever you do what is right, you can sleep knowing you've done what's best. Be confident and let the chips fall where they may. Be well and safe this summer. Have fun.

(c)2007 J. S. Shipman