The Kid Should See This.
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There's just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here.
Kid-friendly not-made-for-kids videos for all! Collected by Rion Nakaya and her four year old co-collector.
Tip Jar: Finding great content for this blog takes work! If you like the videos on this site, please support the science education projects that we've picked on DonorsChoose.org.
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“Rooftops in the summer are hot. Cooling down buildings wastes energy. Solution: Painting roofs with energy saving white reflective paint.” The White Roof Project is a nonprofit dedicated to curbing climate change by painting NYC roofs white and then hopefully franchising the volunteering activity out across the United States.
And they’re absolutely onto something. In 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu pitched this idea. According to the Wall Street Journal, “white roofs and pavements could mean a one-time reduction of 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That… translates to removing all the cars in the world for 18 years.”
Former President Bill Clinton wrote last summer that white rooftops could lower “the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent…”
And in the southeastern region of Almeria, Spain, the reflective roofs of their greenhouses (and they’re seriously into greenhouses) are cooling the air temperature in the region “by an average of 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade since 1983. The rest of Spain, however, has experienced temperatures rise 0.5 degrees Celsius.”
Sounds like it might be time to get some white paint and a few ladders. Read more about The White Roof Project, and if you’re in NYC, volunteer!
To Spring, made in 1936. I loved this cartoon when I was a kid. The colors. The rhymes and music. The saga. Time to pass it along…
If the next generation is aware of space weather like we currently check Earth weather, I wouldn’t be surprised. We’re already paying attention to solar flares, CMEs (coronal mass ejections), high-speed solar winds, and solar energetic particles in the news. With so many sensitive satellites in orbit, as well as power and communications systems at risk of disruption, it makes complete sense that we’d start paying attention to space weather!
This feature reveals how our increasing use of satellite technology has made us vulnerable to solar storms, and how solar scientists—“space weathermen”—are learning how to predict and forecast the Sun’s activity.
Dive deeper into the amazing images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, with the team of scientists and amateur astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:
New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet’s jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth’s atmosphere and influences the weather.
I know the co-curator can’t help but take this sort of view for granted, but WOW: watching a jet stream on Jupiter! How amazing is that?!
via @NASAJPL.
The canals of Amsterdam have completely frozen solid for the first time in 15 years, turning the city into one huge skating rink for all to enjoy.
And one more video for a taste of the sounds on the streets icy canals.
via Devour.
The Inuit call their homes iglu, which is where the term “igloo” for “snow house” comes from. First built by hunters to survive in extreme cold weather conditions, igloos have been around for thousands of years…
An igloo’s walls block the icy wind that’s common in these areas. Snow also happens to be a very good insulator. This means that the heat inside the igloo — whether from a small oil lamp or just body heat — tends to stay inside the igloo. The result is that the inside of an igloo can be as much as 40 degrees warmer than the outside temperature.
Igloos also get stronger and warmer over several days after they’re first built. As trapped heat causes the inside of an igloo to melt slightly, the melted snow will then refreeze when the igloo is unoccupied. A few days of this thawing/refreezing cycle will eventually turn the entire structure to solid ice, which is even stronger and warmer than the original structure…
An experienced igloo builder can construct an igloo in about an hour. If you’ve never built an igloo before, it’ll probably take you three to six hours or more. All you need, though, is plenty of packed snow, a few tools and patience.
via Wonderopolis.
Victor Ortega-Jimenez and Robert Dudley of the University of California, Berkeley, studied the high-speed acrobatics by filming birds under a simulated rain shower and tracking their motion from the video. They found that their flight wasn’t disrupted while spinning and that their moving heads reached up to 30 times the acceleration of gravity.
“The shaking performed by hummingbirds is amazing,” says Ortega-Jimenez. “Humans have blackouts when they reach five times the acceleration of gravity.”
Although a hummingbird’s feathers naturally repel water, the impact of a raindrop can make moisture seep through. The ability to expel water could therefore help them avoid chills and stay healthy. When perched, the birds can shake for twice as long at even higher speeds.
From NewScientist.com.
