• MISC Coolness •
What do aspirin, astroturf, band-aid, bubble wrap, escalator, frisbee, google, granola, hacky sack, heroin, hula-hoop, jacuzzi, jeep, jet ski, jumbotron, kleenex, mace, magic marker, muzak, onesie, photoshop, ping-pong, plexiglas, popsicle, post-it note, q-tip, realtor, rollerblade, saran wrap, sheetrock, skee-ball, styrofoam, super glue, tarmac, taser, teflon, trampoline, velcro, xerox, and zamboni....all have in common? GENERICIDE. (Yep! There's a name for it!) (Wait...realtor??)
Hans Rosling's Statistics In Motion! - The very first TED talk I ever saw, and still in my top 5 favorites! It's one thing to hear numbers connecting a country's economic health with the health of its citizens; it's quite another to see the numbers graphed and put in motion over time.
How Stuff Works. When your kid (or kid brother) asks you, for instance...
...why the sky is blue...
...don't yank his chain by saying "It reflects the blue water in the ocean." Go here, read, learn, explain. (And seriously? "It reflects the blue water of the ocean?" Really? So when you're standing in the middle of a forest, the sky is dark green? Or it's tan if you're standing in the middle of a desert? Come on.)
• Fluid Simulator! http://haxiomic.github.io/GPU-Fluid-Experiments/html5/
Open the link, click and drag anywhere in the dark screen that comes up! Play with "Quality," play with "Solver Iterations" ... just PLAY!
- Brumating alligators! Reptilian brumation is kind of like mammalian hibernation (hibernation involves a much deeper sleep and no eating at all.) Alligators can tell the moment the swamp is about to freeze, and stick their snouts above the water so the ice will freeze around their snouts and they can still breathe while brumating. Hard to imagine without seeing photos!
- Ukranian Sand Animation - PHENOMENAL. This makes a very strong case for art being the most human of all the things humans do. Go here (http://wesha.homeip.net/) for an explanation of why so many in the audience are getting emotional about what she's depicting.
- Wear Sunscreen. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html There's a reason this thing went viral, has been misattributed and spoofed ever since it first appeared in 1997: it is LOADED with good advice. Of course, if you're young you don't think you need it. That's fine, we all ignore advice when we're young, and even when we get older. But *IF* you can sift out one or two nuggets of wisdom here, your life will be that much less stressful.
- Doctor Who - "Blink." A student asked me for TV recommendations, and I found myself recalling this, probably the single best--and maybe the most famous--episode of Doctor Who, from 2007. Ironically, in this episode (written by the same guy who created the Cumberbatch/Freeman Sherlock series) there's not a lot of the Doctor himself, but there's enough. And if you love "timey wimey" causation paradox stories (i.e. if you travel into the past and change ANYTHING, do subsequent events still play out as they did?)....then this is the episode for you. (And this one too!! "The Eleventh Hour!" The episode that got me into Doctor Who in the first place!) (NOTE: I never got into Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, and have fallen off the Doctor Who wagon to the degree that I MAYBE saw one or two episodes with him, but no more than that. Which is TERRIBLE, because my typical metric for liking a Doctor Who episode is, was it written by Steven Moffat? And I just now learned that a large % of the Capaldi episodes were Moffat creations! Weak tea, Mr R...weak tea indeed!)
In Astro class we, toward the end of the year, discuss the Drake Equation, a thought experiment used for estimating the possible number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It is a compound multiplication problem with eight factors, the last of which is the anticipated life expectancy of a technologically advanced civilization. As I told my students, I waffle tremendously on this; On good days I could see Homo sapiens living tens or even hundreds of thousands of years on Earth. On bad days I feel nuclear annihilation is imminent! On top of a possible nuclear war with any of the dozen or so nuclear countries, the end of the line could even come by accident, as it almost did no fewer than TEN times. Check it out:
LIST OF NUCLEAR CLOSE-CALLS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
Brontosaurus vs. Apatosaurus: Is there a difference in these two famously large dinosaurs? YES! https://a-z-animals.com/blog/apatosaurus-vs-brontosaurus/
(Note: comparing sizes:
Brontosaurus ~ 15 tons;
Apatosaurus ~ 25 tons;
Largest elephants, 1.5 tons;
Blue whale? 100-150 tons!)
Timeline of the Far Future - Here are some of the predictions.
In…
…50,000y, the Earth’s rotation has slowed enough that we’d need to add a leap second at the end of every single day.
…100,000y – The simple swirl of the Milky Way galaxy's stars has made it such that familiar constellations are no longer recognizable in the night sky.
…250,000y – A seamount (underwater volcano) will rise above sea level and become a new Hawaiian Island.
…1 my (million years) – Meteor Crater (aka Barringer Crater) in Arizona will have eroded away.
…10 my – No current species on earth will still exist. LIFE WILL STILL ABOUND, but every single species will look drastically different than anything existing today.
…50-60 my – both the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountain ranges will have eroded nearly totally away.
…180 my – Earth's rotation has slowed more; one day will not be 24 but 25 hours long
…240 my - the Sun has completed one orbit around the Milky Way from where it is now.
…600 my – The moon, receding an inch or so every year, has moved far enough away from earth that solar eclipses can no longer happen.
…800-900 my – CO2 levels have dropped to where photosynthesis is no longer possible. (After that, life on earth is quite on borrowed time, sad to say. "BUT...I thought there was 4.5 billion years left on earth?" The Sun should indeed have have another 4 or 5 billion years to live, which means—since the sun will surely take the planets with it when it goes—the EARTH has another 4 or 5 billion years left. But we're not talking about the life OF the earth but about life on earth. Life *on* earth definitely does NOT have 4 or 5 billion years. In 900 million years or so, Earth will no longer be habitable for any kind of life as we know it now: Newer forms of life could evolve that might last past 900 my.)
...we haven’t even got to 1 billion years…Check it out!!
YOU DO NOT MESS WITH SCIENCE DORKS!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/porch-pirates-stole-package-an-engineer-so-he-created-trap-using-glitter-fart-spray/
David Gallo presents Bioluminescents* and Cephalopods - http://www.ted.com/talks/david_gallo_shows_underwater_astonishments - (*yes, that's a plural noun.) A terrific 5 minute video showing amazing underwater species!
CELLULAR ANIMATION (The one I showed in the Cells/Tissues unit, and also back when I taught Bio)
CELLULAR ANIMATION VIDEO EXPLAINED IN DETAIL - http://sparkleberrysprings.com/innerlifeofcell.html
KENDAMA WHIZ KID - Unconscious! - (Just a dude, alone in a stairwell, right?)
Lions vs. Buffalo vs. Crocs. THE FAMOUS BATTLE AT KRUGER PARK! (this link might be better…)
Magnetic Silly Putty Eats A Magnet! (I have this stuff in my room...beware...)
Orangutan + Hound = BEST FRIENDS!
REMARKABLE swarms of starlings in England - Looks like the Squiddy/Sentinel swarm in the Matrix movies...
Here's the Sci-Fi LOVE tee-shirt. https://shirt.woot.com/offers/i-love-scifi-heather-remix
Wolves Chilling With Polar Bears. - (Chilling! Ya get it? BAAAA HA HA HAAAA!!) These two species are natural enemies, folks. Hatfields & McCoys, Montagues & Capulets, Republicans & Democrats, Prescriptivists & Descriptivists. What are they doing comforting each other, romping in the snow together?
Working on a very tall tower. - Getting to work can be a chore, especially if your workplace is 1700 feet (518 m, 1/3 mile)...straight up. What if a storm rolls in?
What do aspirin, astroturf, band-aid, bubble wrap, escalator, frisbee, google, granola, hacky sack, heroin, hula-hoop, jacuzzi, jeep, jet ski, jumbotron, kleenex, mace, magic marker, muzak, onesie, photoshop, ping-pong, plexiglas, popsicle, post-it note, q-tip, realtor, rollerblade, saran wrap, sheetrock, skee-ball, styrofoam, super glue, tarmac, taser, teflon, trampoline, velcro, xerox, and zamboni....all have in common? GENERICIDE. (Yep! There's a name for it!) (Wait...realtor??)
Hans Rosling's Statistics In Motion! - The very first TED talk I ever saw, and still in my top 5 favorites! It's one thing to hear numbers connecting a country's economic health with the health of its citizens; it's quite another to see the numbers graphed and put in motion over time.
How Stuff Works. When your kid (or kid brother) asks you, for instance...
...why the sky is blue...
...don't yank his chain by saying "It reflects the blue water in the ocean." Go here, read, learn, explain. (And seriously? "It reflects the blue water of the ocean?" Really? So when you're standing in the middle of a forest, the sky is dark green? Or it's tan if you're standing in the middle of a desert? Come on.)
• Fluid Simulator! http://haxiomic.github.io/GPU-Fluid-Experiments/html5/
Open the link, click and drag anywhere in the dark screen that comes up! Play with "Quality," play with "Solver Iterations" ... just PLAY!
- Brumating alligators! Reptilian brumation is kind of like mammalian hibernation (hibernation involves a much deeper sleep and no eating at all.) Alligators can tell the moment the swamp is about to freeze, and stick their snouts above the water so the ice will freeze around their snouts and they can still breathe while brumating. Hard to imagine without seeing photos!
- Ukranian Sand Animation - PHENOMENAL. This makes a very strong case for art being the most human of all the things humans do. Go here (http://wesha.homeip.net/) for an explanation of why so many in the audience are getting emotional about what she's depicting.
- Wear Sunscreen. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column-column.html There's a reason this thing went viral, has been misattributed and spoofed ever since it first appeared in 1997: it is LOADED with good advice. Of course, if you're young you don't think you need it. That's fine, we all ignore advice when we're young, and even when we get older. But *IF* you can sift out one or two nuggets of wisdom here, your life will be that much less stressful.
- Doctor Who - "Blink." A student asked me for TV recommendations, and I found myself recalling this, probably the single best--and maybe the most famous--episode of Doctor Who, from 2007. Ironically, in this episode (written by the same guy who created the Cumberbatch/Freeman Sherlock series) there's not a lot of the Doctor himself, but there's enough. And if you love "timey wimey" causation paradox stories (i.e. if you travel into the past and change ANYTHING, do subsequent events still play out as they did?)....then this is the episode for you. (And this one too!! "The Eleventh Hour!" The episode that got me into Doctor Who in the first place!) (NOTE: I never got into Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, and have fallen off the Doctor Who wagon to the degree that I MAYBE saw one or two episodes with him, but no more than that. Which is TERRIBLE, because my typical metric for liking a Doctor Who episode is, was it written by Steven Moffat? And I just now learned that a large % of the Capaldi episodes were Moffat creations! Weak tea, Mr R...weak tea indeed!)
In Astro class we, toward the end of the year, discuss the Drake Equation, a thought experiment used for estimating the possible number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It is a compound multiplication problem with eight factors, the last of which is the anticipated life expectancy of a technologically advanced civilization. As I told my students, I waffle tremendously on this; On good days I could see Homo sapiens living tens or even hundreds of thousands of years on Earth. On bad days I feel nuclear annihilation is imminent! On top of a possible nuclear war with any of the dozen or so nuclear countries, the end of the line could even come by accident, as it almost did no fewer than TEN times. Check it out:
LIST OF NUCLEAR CLOSE-CALLS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
Brontosaurus vs. Apatosaurus: Is there a difference in these two famously large dinosaurs? YES! https://a-z-animals.com/blog/apatosaurus-vs-brontosaurus/
(Note: comparing sizes:
Brontosaurus ~ 15 tons;
Apatosaurus ~ 25 tons;
Largest elephants, 1.5 tons;
Blue whale? 100-150 tons!)
Timeline of the Far Future - Here are some of the predictions.
In…
…50,000y, the Earth’s rotation has slowed enough that we’d need to add a leap second at the end of every single day.
…100,000y – The simple swirl of the Milky Way galaxy's stars has made it such that familiar constellations are no longer recognizable in the night sky.
…250,000y – A seamount (underwater volcano) will rise above sea level and become a new Hawaiian Island.
…1 my (million years) – Meteor Crater (aka Barringer Crater) in Arizona will have eroded away.
…10 my – No current species on earth will still exist. LIFE WILL STILL ABOUND, but every single species will look drastically different than anything existing today.
…50-60 my – both the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountain ranges will have eroded nearly totally away.
…180 my – Earth's rotation has slowed more; one day will not be 24 but 25 hours long
…240 my - the Sun has completed one orbit around the Milky Way from where it is now.
…600 my – The moon, receding an inch or so every year, has moved far enough away from earth that solar eclipses can no longer happen.
…800-900 my – CO2 levels have dropped to where photosynthesis is no longer possible. (After that, life on earth is quite on borrowed time, sad to say. "BUT...I thought there was 4.5 billion years left on earth?" The Sun should indeed have have another 4 or 5 billion years to live, which means—since the sun will surely take the planets with it when it goes—the EARTH has another 4 or 5 billion years left. But we're not talking about the life OF the earth but about life on earth. Life *on* earth definitely does NOT have 4 or 5 billion years. In 900 million years or so, Earth will no longer be habitable for any kind of life as we know it now: Newer forms of life could evolve that might last past 900 my.)
...we haven’t even got to 1 billion years…Check it out!!
YOU DO NOT MESS WITH SCIENCE DORKS!!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/porch-pirates-stole-package-an-engineer-so-he-created-trap-using-glitter-fart-spray/
David Gallo presents Bioluminescents* and Cephalopods - http://www.ted.com/talks/david_gallo_shows_underwater_astonishments - (*yes, that's a plural noun.) A terrific 5 minute video showing amazing underwater species!
CELLULAR ANIMATION (The one I showed in the Cells/Tissues unit, and also back when I taught Bio)
CELLULAR ANIMATION VIDEO EXPLAINED IN DETAIL - http://sparkleberrysprings.com/innerlifeofcell.html
KENDAMA WHIZ KID - Unconscious! - (Just a dude, alone in a stairwell, right?)
Lions vs. Buffalo vs. Crocs. THE FAMOUS BATTLE AT KRUGER PARK! (this link might be better…)
Magnetic Silly Putty Eats A Magnet! (I have this stuff in my room...beware...)
Orangutan + Hound = BEST FRIENDS!
REMARKABLE swarms of starlings in England - Looks like the Squiddy/Sentinel swarm in the Matrix movies...
Here's the Sci-Fi LOVE tee-shirt. https://shirt.woot.com/offers/i-love-scifi-heather-remix
Wolves Chilling With Polar Bears. - (Chilling! Ya get it? BAAAA HA HA HAAAA!!) These two species are natural enemies, folks. Hatfields & McCoys, Montagues & Capulets, Republicans & Democrats, Prescriptivists & Descriptivists. What are they doing comforting each other, romping in the snow together?
Working on a very tall tower. - Getting to work can be a chore, especially if your workplace is 1700 feet (518 m, 1/3 mile)...straight up. What if a storm rolls in?
OTHER COOLNESS
30 Strangest Animal Mating habits!!
As if porcupines weren't weird enough already...
ONLINE COLOR CHALLENGE/EYE TEST
How well do your eyes differentiate slight gradations of color? Take this cool little sorting test to find out! Zero is a perfect score. (In 2014 I, at age 49, scored a 23. My mom, at age 70, scored 15.) [11DEC23, two weeks away from 59 I scored 6!! Roughly 75% better than when I was 49!!]
TITANIC - Navigation, and Other Technical Details
A navigation expert from South Australia has broken down much of the Titanic investigation testimony and come to some well-reasoned conclusions about who did what and when in the North Atlantic on the night of April 14, 1912.
Two-Headed Girl (Siamese twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel)
Read even the littlest bit about the situation and quickly you come to realize they're not a "two-headed girl" at all, but two girls sharing one lower body. They lead a surprisingly normal life!
Why Pluto Is No Longer Considered A Planet
Remember: we didn't kill it, we just reclassified it.* No, Pluto is still out there, being Pluto, as it did LONG before humans gave it a name, and will continue to do long, long, LONG after said humans are gone.
(*Just like we didn't kill asteroid Ceres when we "demoted" it from planetary status in 1850. We just reclassified it. I mean, did you even know that Ceres—halfway between Mars and Jupiter—was once considered a planet? Yep! For half a century! From its discovery in 1801 to 1850, the Solar System's roll call went Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus! Add Neptune in 1846!)
Why Pluto Is No Longer Considered A Planet - Part Deux
The first two paragraphs of the "History of the Concept" section of Wikipedia's "Dwarf Planet" page are as good and concise an explanation as you're likely to read anywhere, including the other Pluto link I have on this page! Check out the portion of the 2nd sentence: "Between [1801] and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23..." WHAT THE WHAT?? WE HAD TWENTY-THREE PLANETS?!?!?! ;-)
YOU TEXT + YOU DRIVE = YOU DIE
"Studies have shown that you are just as likely to be in an accident texting while driving as someone who is legally intoxicated." - Tom Crosby, President of the Carolina Motor Club Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Bifurcated Uvula (that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat: do you have two? If you google-image this, beware: some other nasopharyngeal oddities will come up, including perforated soft palates, etc.)
Science Daily Daily cutting-edge science news.
The Scientist Magazine Online Science research in plain English, with a dash of humor.
BUY THE TISSUE TIKI HERE!! [Can you believe this link is still active!? You can still buy this guy! Except for the rapidly wizening old teacher, this is the oldest object in my classroom; If you're a former student, yes I still have it! It's been a fixture since Nov. 2001 when I first began teaching full time.]
• YOU CANNOT SHOVEL THE BULL THE WAY THIS INFAMOUS BULL-SHOVELER SHOVELS BULL. (Introducing...the Rockwell Retro-Encabulator! Helping you reduce sinusoidal deplenaration.) [And if you prefer your milferred trenyans with an Aussie accent...]
• Charlie The Unicorn (We're going to Candy Mountain!) [Context: The oldest link on my entire site, this is a vestige from my days as an 8th grade teacher, circa 2003 or whenever GCS started mandating that teachers have web pages.]
30 Strangest Animal Mating habits!!
As if porcupines weren't weird enough already...
ONLINE COLOR CHALLENGE/EYE TEST
How well do your eyes differentiate slight gradations of color? Take this cool little sorting test to find out! Zero is a perfect score. (In 2014 I, at age 49, scored a 23. My mom, at age 70, scored 15.) [11DEC23, two weeks away from 59 I scored 6!! Roughly 75% better than when I was 49!!]
TITANIC - Navigation, and Other Technical Details
A navigation expert from South Australia has broken down much of the Titanic investigation testimony and come to some well-reasoned conclusions about who did what and when in the North Atlantic on the night of April 14, 1912.
Two-Headed Girl (Siamese twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel)
Read even the littlest bit about the situation and quickly you come to realize they're not a "two-headed girl" at all, but two girls sharing one lower body. They lead a surprisingly normal life!
Why Pluto Is No Longer Considered A Planet
Remember: we didn't kill it, we just reclassified it.* No, Pluto is still out there, being Pluto, as it did LONG before humans gave it a name, and will continue to do long, long, LONG after said humans are gone.
(*Just like we didn't kill asteroid Ceres when we "demoted" it from planetary status in 1850. We just reclassified it. I mean, did you even know that Ceres—halfway between Mars and Jupiter—was once considered a planet? Yep! For half a century! From its discovery in 1801 to 1850, the Solar System's roll call went Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus! Add Neptune in 1846!)
Why Pluto Is No Longer Considered A Planet - Part Deux
The first two paragraphs of the "History of the Concept" section of Wikipedia's "Dwarf Planet" page are as good and concise an explanation as you're likely to read anywhere, including the other Pluto link I have on this page! Check out the portion of the 2nd sentence: "Between [1801] and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23..." WHAT THE WHAT?? WE HAD TWENTY-THREE PLANETS?!?!?! ;-)
YOU TEXT + YOU DRIVE = YOU DIE
"Studies have shown that you are just as likely to be in an accident texting while driving as someone who is legally intoxicated." - Tom Crosby, President of the Carolina Motor Club Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Bifurcated Uvula (that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat: do you have two? If you google-image this, beware: some other nasopharyngeal oddities will come up, including perforated soft palates, etc.)
Science Daily Daily cutting-edge science news.
The Scientist Magazine Online Science research in plain English, with a dash of humor.
BUY THE TISSUE TIKI HERE!! [Can you believe this link is still active!? You can still buy this guy! Except for the rapidly wizening old teacher, this is the oldest object in my classroom; If you're a former student, yes I still have it! It's been a fixture since Nov. 2001 when I first began teaching full time.]
• YOU CANNOT SHOVEL THE BULL THE WAY THIS INFAMOUS BULL-SHOVELER SHOVELS BULL. (Introducing...the Rockwell Retro-Encabulator! Helping you reduce sinusoidal deplenaration.) [And if you prefer your milferred trenyans with an Aussie accent...]
• Charlie The Unicorn (We're going to Candy Mountain!) [Context: The oldest link on my entire site, this is a vestige from my days as an 8th grade teacher, circa 2003 or whenever GCS started mandating that teachers have web pages.]