Ty’s Weblog

The snow didn’t amount to much more than a dusting.  Things did clear up for the lunar eclipse though, which was nice.

Scientists, good ones anyway, are just different kinds of people.

I think this comic sums up the difference quite nicely.

Composition of Pacman

Looks like it’s official. Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.

So I helped judge a science fair at a local high school today. It was quite an interesting experience. The first place prize was pretty easy to pick out. Second and third could have really gone either way, but I think we did the right thing on them.

It was kinda fun to go through the fair from the other side. I guess this means I really am an adult now, huh.

Spirit has landed.

That’s the latest Mars rover.

We had a beautiful lunar eclipse last night. Xander thought it was amazing to watch the moon disappear and then turn red. It was little cloudy, so it wasn’t the best viewing, but we had enough open patches that we got to see most of it.

Today I attended a course taught by Edward Tufte on data and information presentation. It was excellent. Copies of all three of his books and his recent essay on PowerPoint came with the class, which I can’t wait to finish reading. I highly recommend the books for anyone who has a job that involves the presentation of information. If he’s going to be in your area teaching the class, by all means take it!

I’m sure most people have heard about the huge solar flare that spewed stuff our way yesterday. Hopefully it’ll not be too big a disruption to daily life, but there are some possible side effects.

The 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded yesterday to Alexei Abrikosov, Anthony Leggett and Vitaly Ginzburg for their work in supercondictivity and superfluidity

Over the summer a high school student doing an apprenticeship did a scientific study of the 5 second rule. You know the rule. You drop something on the floor and if you pick it up before 5 seconds pass, it’s safe to eat.

In case you haven’t heard, this month Mars will make it’s closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years on August 27th. It’s a great time to take a look at it with bionculars or, even better, a telescope.