There’s no way I can go to see the upcoming solar eclipse in the United States – I live too far away. However, I fired up my favourite solar system simulator, called Stellarium, and took some screenshots I’d like to share with you.
Continue reading See the August 21 Solar Eclipse using Stellarium
I posed my son a puzzle today. He’s a student, in senior high school, and exams are ever in his mind. I told him a story of four students who missed their exam, and gave him some information about them.
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, the summer solstice is the longest. Depending on whether you live north or south of the tropics, these happen around June 20th and December 20th each year – or the other way round.
Continue reading Why Isn’t The Solstice The Warmest/Coldest Day?
We’ve all heard it – flowers know math. The number of petals on flowers are supposed to all be Fibonacci numbers.
How true is this?
This experiment would have been far, far better if I’d had a thermometer.
My son was doing some science homework, and seemed a bit confused about what would happen to hot and cold water if left on the table.
Now whenever possible, if your child expresses confusion about a science topic, don’t just explain, do an experiment. Most science for young kids is informal enough and practical enough that there’ll be some way to do the experiment around the house.
In this case, it was simple. I filled one cup with water from the kettle, another with water and ice. I asked my son to label each cup, and write down his predictions about what would happen in the end. You can see the setup below:
If we had had a thermometer, I would have asked him to measure the temperature of each cup at various time intervals, say immediately, after 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes and an hour. Then he would have been able to see that both cups reach the ambient temperature of the air around them. As it was, his “thermometer” was to dip his finger in the cups. Too subjective, alas. I’ll have to get a thermometer and try again one day.
