Archive
Rising Star 2012 …Deuxième Partie
Our second week of Rising Stars was as exciting as the first week.
The weather cooperated all week and Friday’s launchings were almost perfect.
The Mansfield News Journal came out and took photos this week. Click here for the link.
I would like to thank Greg Timberlake, Dean of Business, Industry, and Technology Division, Jim Hull, Dean of Health Sciences Division, and Lynn Damberger, Assistant Professor of Digital Media, for their presentations to the Rising Stars.
And a special thanks to everyone who worked so hard this year to make Rising Stars another success:
Crystal Escalera – Director of Rising Stars
Keith Strickler -Alternative Energy Teacher
Gary Wood – Physics Teacher
Rick Karsmizki – Robot Teacher
Brian Baldridge – Robot Teacher
Pat Storms – Volunteer
And most of all…thank you, Linda Nicol, for your unswerving attention to detail. Without your help Rising Stars would not have made it off the ground this year!
Rising Stars 2012
Wow! We finished first Rising Stars Engineering Camp last Friday and started with our second group of forty 7th & 8th graders this morning.
To stay up to date on what’s happening with Rising Stars click on the tab above or click here.
To stay up-to-date on what’s happening with the Technology Department subscribe (to the right.)
The Carrington Event
History.com has an interesting article on the super solar storm that occurred in 1859. It was named the “Carrington Event ” after the amateur astronomer that observed the sunspots, the flares that erupted, their earthly results and tied it all together.
Beautiful Time Lapse Video of the Earth
This is a beautiful time-lapse video of the Earth from the ISS set to the music “Walking on Air”.
13,000 mph!
DARPA released results last week of the second flight of the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 that flew last summer at 13,000 mph or Mach 20!. There is a nice video of the flight here.
Despite the fact that the 2nd flight was announced as a failure in August of 2011 DARPA engineers feel the flight was a success based on the fact that aerodynamic knowledge gained from the first flight allowed the craft to successfully recover from a roll caused by a shock wave that was 100 times more powerful than design parameters.
Read the DARPA release here.
In other space news, here are some amazing photos of the earth taken by the ISS’s new “Nightpod” camera. Take a close look at the Aurora photo on the left. I swear that looks like a cloaked Klington cruiser in the upper left.
Cell Phone Scanner Sees Through Walls
Using a transmitter/receiver built into a tiny CMOS integrated circuit, University of Texas researcher, Kenneth O has developed a Terrahertz bandwidth scanner that does not require multiple lenses or a lot of power. Terrahertz radio waves allows the imaging of objects blocked by walls or human tissue. It would allow Emergency Technicians or doctors to scan for tumors or foreign objects without expensive and large equipment.
(Kenneth O plans to limit the range to 4 inches due to privacy concerns…sure)
Terahertz-Band Cell Phones Could See Through Walls
Great Balls of Fire!
NASA caught an amazing Solar Flare this week.
James Cameron and Google may be backing an Astroid Mining Company.
The Scale of the Universe! Wow!
This is a fun Flash animation!!! Starting from 100meters (1 meter) you can back all the way down to 10-35 meters (0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 meters) and all the way up to1027 meters (10 followed by 26 zeros). Interestingly, this animation extends beyond our metric prefixes: 10-24 meters is a yoctometer or 1 septillionth (10 trillion trillionths?) of a meter and 1024 meters is 1 yottameter or 1 septillion meters (10 trillion trillion meters). Waayy out there!
Use your mouse wheel to scroll in and out.
They’re Baaaccckkk…
Researchers at the University of Rochester and North Carolina State University have used neutrinos to send a message through 240 meters of rock. Pretty neat! Now, if they could just commercialize the transmitting and receive equipment from their billion dollar cost and acres size we could eliminate the need for all those Geo-synchronous satellites and just transmit straight line through the earth.
Researchers Send ‘Wireless’ Message Using Nutrinos
***************** In Other News *******************
Georgia Tech Pioneers New Ways of Teaching Service Robots
Just what questions should a robot ask a human for the robot to understand what the human wants?
New Educational Software Respond to Students’ Emotions in Real Time
Professors of Pshycology and Computer Science are teaming up from the University of Notre Dame, the University of Memphis and MIT to develop tutoring software that will instantly recognize changes in a students mood and adapt its responses accordingly.
Welcome to the Post PC Era
One Bad Apple?
It looks like Apple’s attempt to provide the iPad3 with the highest-resolution screen (ever) on a notebook or notepad has resulted in engineering trade-offs that have left a lot of Apple customers unhappy. Trade-offs like high temperatures (116° F???) to more weight, a thicker pad, extended charge times and shortened charge cycles.
Why The iPad 3 Regressed In Battery Life
****************In Other News****************
Apple shares dropped 9% due to a software bug?
Technology & Science 