Science Experiments ... Eggscellent!

Peace to Sheldon.

I like eggs. Usually scrambled, with cheese. I don't like my eggs too runny. I don't do many science experiments with my eggs besides the chemical reaction between my stomach and the egg when I swallow it.  That's why I'm happy that YouTube user Taras Kul shows a ton of science experiments with eggs. He has a great sense of humor and shows that every science experiment doesn't have to be a success to learn something. Science is about the journey, after all.

Awesome moments from the video include how to make an egg float in the middle of a glass of water, telling whether an egg is boiled or not by the rotational speed, and a hilarious attempt to walk over crates of eggs without breaking them. Enjoy!

Calvin and Hobbes Know Science Looks Good

These are a few of my favorite things

When reading the paper as a kid, one of the first things that I did was skip to the comic section to read the Calvin and Hobbes comic by Bill Watterson.  It's my favorite comic of all time, and it often provides hilarious geeky interpretations of science, math, and other things that are covered on this blog. Luckily the Daily Calvin and Hobbes Facebook page has been giving me life for a while now. It's been a great online version of the various compilation books that you see in the pic above, which I acquired from the clearance racks of Borders (RIP) and Barnes & Nobles over several years.

Check out the below comic where Calvin daydreams during math .. haven't we all done this?

Post by Daily Calvin & Hobbes.

Here's another comic featuring one of my favorite Calvin alter egos, Spaceman Spiff.  He travels through space and ... battles things.

Post by Daily Calvin & Hobbes.

Here's Calvin thinking about how far computers may go in terms of artificial intelligence. Remember, this comic was made way before high end computers and the spread of the internet. 

Post by Daily Calvin & Hobbes.

Finally, here's Calvin going through the struggle that us science geeks face when trying to explain our passions to others. 

Post by Daily Calvin & Hobbes.

NASA Fermi: You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry

Gamma rays helped turn Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk

The Hubble isn't the only telescope floating in orbit around earth - NASA also has the Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope. Fermi turns five this week.

Why gamma rays? The visible light that we see is a small part of a much larger electromagnetic spectrum. The Fermi telescope uses gamma rays, which travel very fast with a very high energy (i.e. they have a high frequency). Faster, high energy waves have a better chance of detecting hard-to-see objects in the universe such as black holes. Check out the following description of the spectrum from Science Company.

The chart makes it apparent that lower energy light on the left of the visible spectrum such as radio, microwave, and infrared are what we see in our everyday lives.  Several of these waves are passing through your body as you read this, but since they are low energy no damage is done. The higher energy gamma rays on the right can only be used safely because the Fermi telescope is in space, away from human contact.

From the NASA Fermi mission site:

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), the mission's main instrument, scans the entire sky every three hours. The state-of-the-art detector has sharper vision, a wider field of view, and covers a broader energy range than any similar instrument previously flown.

Fermi's secondary instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), sees all of the sky at any instant, except the portion blocked by Earth. This all-sky coverage lets Fermi detect more gamma-ray bursts, and over a broader energy range, than any other mission. These explosions, the most powerful in the universe, are thought to accompany the birth of new stellar-mass black holes.

Check out a five year retrospective of the Fermi telescope below.

All this news makes the Incredible Hulk happy, and he celebrates by beating the mess out of Loki in this scene from the Avengers movie.

Geeks Are Taking Over YouTube Next Week

YouTube is featuring a ton of great geeky stuff from August 4th - 10th.  A quick view of the video below shows geek heroes such as Bill Nye and Felicia Day. They also give a great definition of the word "geek":

"We're the biggest fans. We're curious about the world. We question what's possible" 

Being a geek is not just about playing video games, reading comic books, etc. It's about being comfortable with who you are and never letting the status quo change something that you believe in.

Check out http://yt.be/geekweek all next week for some pic nerdery

Forbidden Tech #6 - Fridges

Forbidden Tech is my video series where I talk about pieces of technology that I was not allowed to have as a kid, scarring me forever. Check out the earlier Forbidden Tech videos here.

Why didn't my mom let me have a fridge has a kid? We investigate the case.  Check out the video!​ If you can't see the video below, click here.