salem6sci

A nice visual demonstration of just how a transverse wave works. Allows you to change the amplitude and frequency of the wave and see changes.

A great online home where students and parents can find projects to be involved in. Makes science active and real in easy and approachable ways.

"tarting 35 years ago, our view of the solar system was forever changed. The launch of the Voyager 1 probe on Sept. 5, 1977 ushered in a golden era of planetary exploration. Along with its sister probe, Voyager 2, the spacecraft took the first detailed images of planets in the outer solar system, discovering magnificent rings, churning atmospheric processes, and volcanic activity on tiny moons. Voyager 2 actually launched on Aug. 20, slightly earlier than its counterpart, but took a longer route to reach Jupiter and Saturn after Voyager 1. The Voyager probes were a scaled-back version of a proposed "Grand Planetary Tour" mission, which would have used a rare alignment in the outer solar system to swing from planet to planet with minimal fuel. In the original plan, four spacecraft would have visited all the gas giants and even tiny Pluto (then still a planet). But without budgetary support from President Nixon and Congress, the ambitious mission was canceled. Since the 1977 planetary configuration occurred only once every 177 years, NASA engineers decided to go forward with a new plan - the Voyager probes, two identical robots that would travel to Jupiter and Saturn and, if successful, on to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 ultimately performed a closer encounter with Saturn's moon Titan that flung it out of the solar system, and only Voyager 2 made it to the latter planets."

"The Milky Way hosts at least 17 billion Earth-size alien planets, and probably many more, a new study reveals. Astronomers have determined that about 17% of stars in our galaxy harbor a roughly Earth-size exoplanet in a close orbit. Since there are 100 billion or so stars in the Milky Way, that works out to a minimum of 17 billion small, rocky alien worlds, or an Earth-size planet around one of every six stars. And there are probably many more such planets orbiting at greater distances from their stars, some of which may even be "alien Earths" capable of supporting life as we know it."

"Enter the planetary defenders, a group of astronomers, physicists and aerospace engineers who have since the early 1990s been locating flying space rocks, painstakingly plotting their orbits, and thinking of ingenious schemes to drag them off course or blow them up should they be on a trajectory toward us. Finally, they have been imagining how the fractious family of man might come together with a contingency plan to literally save the planet, like Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Hollywood's Armageddon. NASA has identified 94% of the huge, potentially civilization-ending asteroids nearby (none of which is on an earth-trajectory for now). But only about 1 percent of the 500,000 Near Earth Objects around the size of 2012 DA14 orbiting near earth's orbit have been tracked. The space agency's global Spaceguard program connects professional and amateur telescopes looking for smaller NEOs. A telescope in Spain picked 2012 DA14 when it was 2.7 million miles away, and reported it to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge. Later,scientists calculated its trajectory, based on a few plot points of its movement."

A video from a female astronaut on the International Space Station showing how she washes her hair.

"NASA eClips™ are short, relevant educational video segments. These videos inspire and engage students, helping them see real world connections."

The space program was forged from paranoia and fear. Our first rockets were weapons. Our first moves into the world beyond our own were motivated by competition. But when we finally got ourselves into space -- when we first traveled around our lonely planet, and took our first bounding leaps on the moon -- many of those baser motivations transformed into something more transcendent and profound: Space came to mean something much more than ideology. Space ended up teaching us about life on Earth.

"The spacesuit is the unsung hero of the space industry. It doesn't boast the massive thrust of a rocket, nor does it have the panache of a lunar lander. But the spacesuit is a marvel. It's a mini-spaceship in its own right, designed to protect the most iconic symbol of all: the astronaut. However, the spacesuit isn't without its flaws - just look at some of the funny outtakes from the Apollo landings. That's why it's evolved in the past few decades. With 11 layers of materials, the suit takes years to produce and costs millions of dollars. Each astronaut spends quality time with his or her suit before going into space, donning it for up to 10 hours per day during training. "

"Now, to mark the record-breaking dive's one-year anniversary, Red Bull (Baumgartner's sponsor for the dive) has released another video of Baumgartner's freefall - this one explicitly shot from Baumgartner's point of view. It's the same spinning and breathing and terror-mongering you might recognize from the originally published video, except even more intimate. And even more exhilarating."

"The Why Files is a good website that I discovered in a Classroom 2.0 discussion. The Why Files is a resource designed for students to learn about the science of stories in the news. The Why Files doesn't cover every news story, just the stories that have clear connections to science concepts. For example, one of the stories on the front page over the weekend was about the start of Hurricane Season. The story goes on to explain in text, image, and video the science of hurricane formation."

"The Spangler Effect is a new YouTube channel from Steve Spangler Science. Unlike his popular Sick Science videos which are no more than short demonstrations of science experiments students and parents can do at home, The Spangler Effect videos offer longer (15 minutes or so) explanations of science experiments. The Spangler Effect videos explain the science of do-it-yourself experiments and how you can recreate those experiments at home or in your classroom"

"We are in the process of looking at some of our favorite activities and figuring out ways to share some of our ideas about them with after-school centers and other spaces outside of the tinkering studio. Light painting is an exploration that we have returned to again and again in a variety of settings. A starting point for thinking about materials, environment, and next steps can be found in the PDF document that Walter made for the PIE project (a precursor to the Tinkering Studio). I wanted to share some of the assumptions that we've confirmed and new ideas that have come up in the past few years of trying the activity in the tinkering studio space on the museum floor."

"You can now greet by name two new residents of the period table of elements: Flerovium and Livermorium. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially approved names for the elements - which sit at slot 114 and 116, respectively - on May 31. They have until now gone by the temporary monikers ununquadium and ununhexium."

A great collection of videos from 3M about science found in every day life.

"Most of us have a microwave oven in our kitchen. They make heating up leftovers and the dreaded readymeal much faster than a conventional oven. In this Naked Science Scrapbook, we find out how the microwave oven produce the microwaves, and how they actually cook the food, plus how popcorn played a key role in the invention of the microwave oven"

"This is actually very similar to what happens when popcorn pops or when you try to microwave a marshmallow. Those air bubbles in the soap (or the popcorn kernels or the marshmallow) contain water. Water is also caught up in the matrix of the soap itself. The expanding effect is caused when the water is heated by the microwave. The water vaporizes, forming bubbles, and the heat causes trapped air to expand. Likewise, the heat causes the soap itself to soften and become pliable. This effect is actually a demonstration of Charles' Law. Charles' Law states that as the temperature of a gas increases, so does its volume. When the soap is heated, the molecules of air in the soap move quickly, causing them to move far away from each other. This causes the soap to puff up and expand to an enormous size. Other brands of soap without whipped air tend to heat up and melt in the microwave."

"Steve Spangler discovers the microwave oven is not just for warming leftovers. Grab a bar of fresh Ivory soap and gather your friends around the microwave oven. Sure, you could do it at your home, but save this great trick for the break room or the staff cafeteria. In under two minutes, you'll have the best soap soufflé you've ever seen."

This could be a fun phase change experiment to try. Dry ice is frozen CO2 -- which needs to stay at a ridiculously low temperature to stay frozen. When you put it in the balloon, it changes phases to a gas -- which is less dense and expands, causing the balloon to fill.