education
esiegel | June 2, 2009Sometimes, it isn't just what's broken or how badly it's broken, but location can turn a trivial job into a virtually impossible one. Take the last shuttle repair mission to Hubble, for example.
This mission caused all sorts of records to be set, including the longest spacewalk ever! What caused the tremendous setback? A stuck bolt. No kidding. All-in-all, the servicing took five separate spacewalks of many hours each. A nice writeup of the difficulty of these repairs is given by Julianne here. Consider this: if the telescope were on the ground, all repairs could easily have been done in…
drorzel | June 2, 2009I'm in a line of work where I have to listen to a lot of graduation speeches-- at least one per year. Yesterday, though, I got a phone call asking me to give one at my old high school's graduation in three and a half weeks.
This is kind of a weird situation, because while it has been 20 years since I graduated (twenty years this year, in fact), and I have had a fairly successful career to this point, I'm not sure I can distill any generally applicable advice from that. I've been very lucky in a lot of things, and most of the coolest stuff I've had the opportunity to do has been through some…
grrlscientist | June 2, 2009tags: Common Whitethroat, Sylvia communis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Common Whitethroat, Sylvia communis, photographed in Denmark. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Roger Tidman/ RSPB.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | June 2, 2009tags: feral cats, housecats, feral cat colonies, unwanted pet cats, alien species, invasive alien species, wild birds, disease transmission, conservation, streaming video
This video documents the fact that "feral cat colonies" are a disaster for wild birds. Each year free-roaming and feral cats kill hundreds of million of birds in the United States. One controversial solution to deal with the feral cat problem is trap, neuter and release. However, evidence is growing that this method is not eliminating the cat colonies or the predation of birds and other wildlife. There are other problems…
edyong | June 1, 2009History has had no shortage of outstanding female mathematicians, from Hypatia of Alexandria to Ada Lovelace, and yet no woman has ever won the Fields medal - the Nobel prize of the maths world. The fact that men outnumber women in the highest echelons of mathematics (as in science, technology and engineering) has always been controversial, particularly for the persistent notion that this disparity is down to an innate biological advantage.
Now, two professors from the University of Wisconsin - Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz - have reviewed the strong evidence that at least in maths, the gender…
rallain | June 1, 2009Notice how much I like the word "stuff". It really is a very useful word. I wonder if I did a wordle for this whole blog, would "stuff" be the biggest?
Anyway, I have been thinking about this popular Chronicle of Higher Education article Will Higher Education be the Next Bubble to Burst?. The basic argument the article makes is that higher education (especially private schools) are too expensive. It also talks about online universities such as Phoenix online and how they are becoming more popular. In all this "bursting bubble" discussion, there is an extremely important question:
What is…
grrlscientist | June 1, 2009tags: Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, photographed at Paul Rushing Park, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 28 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/500s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | June 1, 2009Today is the first day of the last week of class, hallelujah. Unfortunately, it's also the first class on rotational motion and angular momentum. This is unfortunate because it's the hardest material in the course-- angular momentum doesn't behave in as intuitive a manner as linear momentum, and the math involved is the most complicated of anything we do in the course.
This mostly has to do with the vector product, or "cross product." Angular momentum can be written as the product between the position vector from the axis of rotation to the moving object and the linear momentum of the moving…
sciencepunk | May 31, 2009Reader romunov has made an excellent observation about support of science in their native Slovenia:
If you look at the budget for 2009 of Slovenia (only in Slovenian) you will notice that there is little (ok, no) mention of scholarships for natural sciences by responsible Ministries. There are, however, predicted 50.732,00 ⬠for scholarships for study of law by the Faculty of law. I fail to see how we need to encourage study of law, given that this faculty receives a lion's share of new souls each year.
How do you think the UK compares against this? How do scholarships available for the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2009Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Horton describe the extent to which college tuitions appear to have become the next economic bubble:
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent -- more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.
...the middle class, which has paid for higher education in the past mainly by taking out loans, may now be precluded from doing so as the private student-loan market has all but dried up. In addition, endowment cushions…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2009tags: Tennessee Warbler, Vermivora peregrina, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Tennessee Warbler, Vermivora peregrina, photographed at Lake Thompson in Kingsbury County, South Dakota. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 2 May 2009 [larger view]
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 30, 2009tags: Tri-Colored Heron, Egretta tricolor, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery birds] Tri-Colored Heron, Egretta tricolor, photographed at Quintana, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 1 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with tsn-pz camera eyepiece 1/250s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 29, 2009tags: Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Anna's Hummingbird, Calypte anna, photographed in Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Richard Ditch, 30 January 2005.
Date Time Original: 2005:01:30 07:51:30
Exposure Time: 1/159
F-Number: 8.00
ISO: 400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 28, 2009tags: Thayer's Gull, Larus thayeri, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Thayer's Gull, Larus thayeri, photographed on the Pacific coastline of San Francisco, California. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Terry Sohl, 18 December 2008 [larger view]
Photo taken with a Canon 50D, 400 5.6L.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 27, 2009tags: Wilson's Snipe, Gallinago delicata, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Wilson's Snipe, Gallinago delicata, photographed in San Bernard Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 2 March 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/400s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | May 27, 2009tags: HSUS, Humane Society of the United States, Animal Rights, terrorism, animal shelters, streaming video
This video shows you a little information about the Humane Society of the United States or H$U$ -- is a tax-free corporation that supports terrorist organizations while pretending to the public that they raise funds to provide shelter to homeless animals. Terrorist? What can I possibly mean? Watch this video and find out ... [2:27]
grrlscientist | May 26, 2009tags: Greylag Goose, Anser anser, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Greylag Goose, Anser anser, photographed at an RSPB reserve in Strumpshaw, Norfolk, UK. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Brian McFarlane, 2009.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Here's a bit of a change of pace: The ID of this bird is easy, but can you tell me the proper term for what it is doing and explain why it is doing this?
This bird is whiffling; flipping upside down to dump airspeed so it can land [read more about it].
Review all mystery…
drorzel | May 26, 2009We no longer do what is possibly my favorite lab in the intro mechanics class. We've switched to the Matter and Interactions curriculum, and thus no longer spend a bunch of time on projectile motion, meaning there's no longer room for the "target shooting" lab.
It's called that because the culmination of the lab used to be firing small plastic balls across the room and predicting where they would land. In order to make the prediction, of course, you need to know the velocity of the balls leaving the launcher, and making that measurement was the real meat of the lab. The way I used to do it,…
grrlscientist | May 25, 2009tags: Tufted Titmouse, Parus bicolor, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Tufted Titmouse, Parus bicolor, photographed in Manhattan, Kansas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow]
Image: Dave Rintoul, 11 April 2009 [larger view].
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Rick Wright, author of Aimophila Adventures and Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes:
We find ourselves looking up at a gray bird. The tail is moderately long and somewhat disheveled; the body plumage is lax and fluffy. This one's a poser.
When we can…
grrlscientist | May 25, 2009tags: religion, prayer in schools, godlessness, atheism, streaming video
This video discusses using religion, particularly school prayer, as a mechanism for alienating children who are different. [6:34]