Friday Fun: Things you can microwave July 17, 2015
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun, homeschooling, science, younger son.Tags: friday fun, microwaves, soap, thermal expansion
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Most people are familiar with the concept of microwaving a grape to make an arc. If not, the procedure is very simple: cut a grape in half but leave just a small bit of skin to connect to the two halves. Put the grape on a plate in the microwave, turn it on, and watch the sparks fly. (As a side note, I’ve been able to replicate this on a smaller scale when microwaving green beans.) This video explains it fairly clearly:
This week, we discovered another fun microwaving activity: soap. I can’t be just any soap: it specifically has to be Ivory soap. Apparently it gets hot and the gas bubbles expand causing it to create a hot foam which grows fairly quickly. You can’t do it with other soaps, however, because they’re too hard and will explode.
We used a whole bar of soap with our experiment, but the younger son told us later that the demo he saw only used a smaller chunk. Be careful after you pull it out of the microwave: it’s hot! Also, once it’s cooled, you can use the soap, although it may be more useful to stick it into a soap sleeve than try to use it directly.
It looked like this when we were finished:
To see the whole process, the video is here.
Friday Fun: Old (pirate) Movies January 2, 2015
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun.Tags: CGI, friday fun, movies, pirates
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Over the holiday break, we were on a bit of a pirate kick. We watched the first three Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) movies. On New Year’s Eve, we were trying to pick out another movie and I found an old VHS tape of Cutthroat Island, one of my favorite movies from my teen years. Despite having the tape, I can’t honestly remember the last time I watched it.
Apparently, this is one of those movies that had really poor advertising when it came out. People either have never heard of it or saw it and loved it. I’d heard of it because I was on a big Geena Davis kick at the time. Who didn’t want to grow up to be like Geena Davis twenty years ago?
It was a lot of fun after watching PotC. It was very obviously made before widespread use of CGI, which led to a lot of interesting cinematography. First, the ships were beautiful and incredible, and there were lots of gorgeous scenes of sweeping around the ships from the air…something that you didn’t see a lot of in PotC. Second, there were lots of real explosions, and the stunts were obviously done by stunt doubles. With the exception of one scene where Matthew Modine was running away from an explosion and was conked on the head unexpectedly, there are a lot of scenes where they obviously pan back from the actors (especially Geena Davis) and you just somehow can tell it’s a double. And then there’s the whole thing you start to realize watching pre-CGI movies: CGI makes everything so clean and polished…and this movie wasn’t…which made it seem more real.
The thing I loved most about it, though, had nothing to do with CGI: it was that Geena Davis’ character never needs rescuing…and was often the rescuer.
Obviously it’s not a ‘classic’ pirate movie nor did it have the polish of a Disney-fied film, but it was a lot of fun. And it was a bit of time travel – backwards to the age of pirates but also backwards to the pre-CGI era. It makes me want to pull out some other “old” movies to share with the kids. What are some of your favorite “old” movies?
Friday fun: The best videos I’ve seen this week September 20, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun, physics, science.Tags: a capella science, Bill Nye, dancing, nina davuluri, physics, video
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In hearing about all the racism that surfaced regarding Nina Davuluri, I heard someone mention she’d done a Bollywood dance for her performance. I had to check it out, and I have to admit that I’m very impressed. Her kneeling spins are something else.
I wasn’t nearly as impressed with Bill Nye’s cha cha on Dancing with the Stars, but you have to admit it’s kind of cute (if a bit stereotyped).
And speaking of science and music (but not dance), I also came across this wonderful remake of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody called Bohemian Gravity. I think this one is my favorite this week…it combines some pretty amazing talent with really amazing physics.
Friday Fun: What is your favorite wavelength? August 2, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in electromagnetics, Friday Fun, physics.Tags: colors, friday fun, light, physics, spectrum, waves
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I want to know everyone’s favorite color…by their wavelength. If you need help, here you go:
My personal favorite is right around 400 nm. And it’s entirely for aesthetic reasons.
So what is yours and why?
(Yeah, I know…everyone is going to pick some non-optical frequency. And yes, you have to stick to photons. Maybe we can do sonic waves another week…)
Friday Fun: Minion Posters July 26, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun.Tags: friday fun, minion
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I need to print these out and hang them up in my office. (Apologies to my Facebook friends, who have already seen these…depending on whether or not FB lets you see all my posts.)
Friday Fun: How dogs keep cool & cool things with control theory June 22, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, Friday Fun, pets.Tags: engineering, friday fun, Gigadog
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A friend posted the following video on facebook. I think I may use this with my class this fall, so they can get a good handle on the cool things you can do with control theory:
This is based on the following video created with computer animation. (I find it amusing that for so many years, we’ve been trying to master creating animation that looks real, and now Intel tried to make something real that mimicked an animation.)
Once you’ve finished watching those, you’ll want to check out the latest cartoon featuring Gigadog. (I think all Newf owners understand this one…)
Friday Fun: best videos I came across this week June 8, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun, humor.Tags: electronics, robin williams, solar physics, star wars, venus, video
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Just keep in mind that I don’t have a very high bar for all of them….
Friday Fun: Long live the Queen July 19, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in Friday Fun, societal commentary.Tags: Freddie Mercury, marriage, music, Queen, video
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The Queen has signed onto marriage equality in England and Wales.
I’m not sure who came up with this image (I’d love to give credit), but I adore it.
A reference to the Queen and gay people obviously leads me to think of Freddie Mercury. (Am I right?)
I imagine he would be happy about the pronouncement, so to celebrate, I’m posting Queen videos today.
I did an informal poll on Facebook and Twitter of my friends’ favorite Queen songs. I got about 18 responses with 20 songs, but there were two that were named repeatedly.
Everyone, of course, loves, Bohemian Rhapsody:
Although there were some people who prefer the Muppet version:
The definite favorite, however, was Under Pressure:
Personally, though, I was a bit disappointed that no one else shared my personal favorite:
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