I just got an email from a teacher who has gotten into making rap videos with his middle and high school students about the science topics they’re learning. Given our DNA musical and all of the great sound box recordings you’ve done, I have a feeling that you’ll appreciate this!
Our trip to the top of Mauna Kea on our vacation was full of science geek fun, but was diminished by the absence of the rest of the Explainers and Paul D.
Because of its height and clear skies, this is apparently one of the best places in the world for astronomical observatories. We didn’t get to go into the research telescopes, but the park guides set up scopes and showed us Saturn and the stars in the Milky Way.
As we were driving down, I think we saw the green flash.
The sky looked much more green than it does in this photo. But to be honest, I’m really not sure whether we saw it or not. According to my guide book (Hawaii the Big Island Revealed), the green flash occurs in super clear skies just after the sun goes down. The light is bent through the thickest part of the atmosphere, splitting into the colors of the rainbow. The green and blue are bent the most, and so you see green in the sky for a few moments. Anyway, I thought of all of you!
Happy America’s Birthday Day! I spent the day in Coney Island fulfilling an ultimate dream of mine…witnessing the majesty of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest. There was a fine field of gurgitators but in reality the only two that mattered were Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut. Kobayashi couldn’t compete with the upstart American who devoured 68 hot dogs in ten minutes.
It’s pretty incredible that these otherwise normal looking human beings can eat so much more than the average man or woman. I feel like I couldn’t eat more than 7 hot dogs in 10 mins. We also started trying to figure out what food we would want to competititvely eat. I said either strawberries or french fries. After the contest we watched the fireworks over the Hudson! All in all the ultimate way to spend the holiday. Hope everyone is doing well in San Fran.
