Tag: curiosity

Optical Discs

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Stack of DVD-R discs.
Never used, never to be used.

It really wasn’t that long ago that computers came equipped with optical disc drives, and they were effective means of data storage, and the density you could store on a DVD instead of a CD was pretty exciting. Now? They’re not only borderline-useless, but the features that we used to reference as a cultural touchstone are no longer obvious to our students.

It’s not that they don’t know what these are. It’s that they haven’t handled a million of them to know their dimensions, to understand the diffraction rainbow they make. The physicists around here remember using the inescapable AOL discs as cheap, readily available diffraction gratings back in grad school. The astronomers use their proportions to illustrate the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy. Students now need to physically hold one of these to get the idea, because they don’t have a mental image ready to go.

Our Galaxy, if you were wondering, is roughly proportioned as a CD, only instead of being a millimeter and a half thick, is more like 1,000 light years. Very roughly, anyway.

Carbonized

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Bamboo cutting board with large spiral section burnt to charcoal
Oops!

Strange things come through the shop doors some days. This one perfumed the shop for a time, a bamboo cutting board which had been resting on a hot electric coil. Everything smelled like burnt corn husk.

Everything. It was a pervasive scent, intriguing at first and overwhelming after a time.

Bamboo cutting board with a smooth, round divot where the burnt area had been
Looks and smells better.

Scraped, chiseled, sanded, and… well, not exactly like brand new, but in usable shape once again!

Part 1

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Ditto of Math 101 final exam, part 1, from November 15, 1948
Ditto!

Astronomy, here and elsewhere often under the Physics umbrella, was once part of the Mathematics department at Bucknell. Occasionally, we’ll stumble across some old files in the Observatory that have been yellowing gracefully for decades. Like this two-part final exam from Math 101. Algebra!

Of note for context: this old exam – November 15th, 1948 – waited patiently in a filing cabinet at the current Observatory, built in 1963. In all likelihood, it sat in a folder in the old Observatory for thirteen years, transferred to Tustin Gym for a time, and then quietly continued to be forgotten in a new building until some tech decided to clean the place up a bit.

Who doesn’t love finding curiosities in purple ditto ink?

Stamped

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Lead brick, painted yellow, stamped by Nuclear Associates of Carle Place, NY.
It’s big, heavy, and boldly colored.

Lead bricks are useful things. This one – still bearing the stamp of Nuclear Associates, of Carle Place, NY – has had its fair share of scuffs and dents. (Lead’s soft stuff, you know.) These days it functions as a handy doorstop and a hands-on tool for explaining the density of matter.

Denser than water, than aluminum, than a nickel-iron meteorite. (All easy samples to acquire for demonstration.) Less dense than osmium; about half as much. (Not on hand, unfortunately.) Definitely less dense than the core of our Sun, by an order of magnitude-plus.

Also no handy samples of stellar core plasma on hand.

Leonids

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Meteor counting log, Leonids shower, from November 1934
Up to three per minute!

Ninety years ago, during the Leonids meteor shower, someone was counting a lot of burning bits of debris from comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. With one fifteen-minute window boasting forty-five meteors (!), that’s a powerfully active shower. Not quite a storm, but those happen with the Leonids sometimes.

According to NASA, the Leonids peak about every 33 years, with 1966 being a spectacular meteor storm. In one fifteen-minute window, thousands of meteors fell like glowing rain. How amazing is that?

Also: check out the times indicated. We’re assuming the counting started at 11:00pm and ran until early morning, with a 24-hour clock opposite how we’d expect it. (Maybe sleep deprivation?) Either that or it was a truly spectacular meteor shower!

News Release: Space Footwear

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Space footwear press release.
“I call them sneakies…”

This raises a major question: do astronauts typically wear shoes? Or do they float about in socks? Or those pajamas with the feet? We understand that every gram counts when launching things into space, so what sort of footwear makes the cut?

The Converse look is a fine one, of course. And do we spy both laces and zip-up sides?

News Release: Space Frogs

Posted on by Brian Garthwaite
Press release, "Orbiting frogs doing well"
Space travel is only fun if you signed up willingly.

We’re all relieved to hear that. While the American bullfrog enjoys a large natural range throughout eastern North America, and are celebrated jumpers, they are not typically encountered at heights above the earth that one would consider “in orbit.”

Whatever it’s like to think like a frog, we can safely assume that the rocket launch and orbital microgravity experiences were weird by any frog standards.