Monthly Archives: March 2013

Future of Fusion

Today’s speaker at All School Meeting was John Rice.  He is the Principle Researcher over at the fusion reactor at MIT.  I haven’t been there in a few years, but when I taught the Junior Science Seminar, I used to bring the students on a tour there every year.  There are not many places where […]

NASA, education and the Sequester….

A few days ago, NASA decided to suspend all educational funding, which you can read about here. “Effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and […]

HapYak

I have been playing around a bit with a new website, HapYak, which allows students (and teachers) to annotate videos.  My hope is that students who want to learn by watching a YouTube video will instead of being passive watchers, develop an online way to become an active learner.  Traditionally, one would listen to a […]

The Cold Lab

Last week to round up our study of thermodynamics we had the opportunity to visit the BU Physics Department.  We walked down in the cold (brrrrr) weather to see something even colder.   While there, Carsten gave us a tour of Professor Mohanty’s lab who does work in nanotechnology where they have an experiment where […]

Pipe Organ

This morning I had the grand pleasure of receiving a tour of the BU Pipe Organ from BU Engineering Alumnus Alvan Moore.   He came to my attention after a brief exchange with ECE Professor Robert Koguga.  Here is another great article on the organ. Nelson Barden, who spend several years building the organ, gave me […]

Smart Cities

As I was walking around campus on Wednesday and checking out the mess in the robotics lab I noticed there was a Smart Cities conference taking place in the Photonics Center. To quote the article by Rich Barlow “Wouldn’t it be nice if communicating “smart” lights could sense when there’s no oncoming traffic and wa […]

End of the world as we know it

When I was growing up, one of the lead mentors who influenced me was Craig Robinson who runs, Nick, the planetarium at Central Connecticut State University. I get period updates from him on the end of the world, and I need to quote him from a couple weeks ago: “Last Friday was amazing. By now […]

LEGO ruins

These are two cool links I wanted to share that Ny Martin shared with me. http://legoexpress.tumblr.com/post/36763541065/itlego-ruins-created-by-nicole-gustafsson http://www.richardpenner.com/2010/04/german-artist-jan-vormann-travels-world.html

Thermo Experiments

A brief summary of the variety of thermo experiments in work this week.   Gryffindor: Conduction in an Iron Bar: Jordan, Jeff, Olek Mix hot and Cold Water: Liam, Lenni, Henry Alcohol and Water: Alex and Michael Heating Water: Sarah, Habiba, and Sophia Hufflepuff: Heating Saltwater: Emily and Ziling Mixing hot and cold water/alcohol: Madeleine […]

Higgs Boson

Many thanks for Michael Silver for catching some nice articles in the NY Times.   “HIGGS BOSON EXPLAINED IN CAROONS! The New York Times featured a special edition of the “Science Times” on the topic of the higgs boson. It details how they discovered it, what it is, and the whole story.   They have […]