Circuits Are For The Children

I went to college for electrical engineering, which means that I made a lot of things blow up and risked electrocuting myself on my daily basis. Unfortunately even though I grew up as a geek, college was the first time that i ever interacted with one of these devices.

Luckily, parents today have much greater choices to engage their children in the wonders of electronics.  Littlebits is an awesome device playground for young children that I wish I had as a kid. As a matter of fact, I'll likely order one and review here because it looks very cool, and much more user friendly then what I had to use ten years ago.

If you can't see the video below, click here.

Happy Birthday Carl Sagan!

Carl Sagan is a major reason why this blog exists. I've been into science as a kid, but I always envisioned it as a niche, nerdy thing.  Carl Sagan showed me that science can be mainstream and cool because it affects everything around is, every day!  He directly inspires my #ScienceLooksGood hashtag.

Check out this amazing video from Sagan's audiobook for Pale Blue Dot. Sagan describes how humbling it is that the earth is nothing more than a pale blue dot in the vast openness of a much larger universe that we have yet to understand. If you can't see the video embed below, click here.

Happy birthday, Carl.

Sports Science: Basketball and Parabolas

I live in Philly now, but I'll always be a die hard Knicks fan. So when the Knicks were in town for a game against the Sixers, I was there in my Knicks jersey acting a fool. A fool for science!

Think of what happens when you throw a ball. After you throw it, it follows the motion shown below:

This shape is known as a parabola. The ball beings to move up, but then gravity eventually pulls it back down.  This doesn't only work for a ball - it can also be a person! If someone is jumping, dunking, or do anything that launches them into the air, they will follow the same basic path. 

Another great example of parabolic motion is everyone's favorite part of a basketball game - free crappy t shirts! For some reason, people go crazy whenever offered free t-shirts that they will never wear in their lives. Philly takes it an extra step by having a huge t-shirt CANNON. I don't use that word lightly ... here's a pic of them wheeling it out onto the court.

Yeah. It's not joke. I've seen it advertised that it can shoot up to 100 t-shirts per minute. Why that stat exists, and why I know it, is a story for another day.  But when you see it actually begin to shoot, it's pretty impressive. And of course, the t-shirts fly in a parabolic motion towards a sea of halfway inebriated fans that will break your neck to catch a future dust rag.  You can check it out in action in the video that I posted at the beginning of this thread.

Presidential Science - Vote!

The President meets an 8th grader named Joey from Phoenix, AZ at the White House Science Fair and the two launch a marshmallow across the State Dining Room of the White House with Joey's science project - an air cannon.

Today is Election Day in the US. No matter what your political affiliation is, make sure that you exercise your right to vote! Among the many things that the president can influence in four years is science and technology.

Several presidents were science geeks. Truman signed the bill to create the National Science Foundation, Carter helped fund the Hubble Space Telescope, and Kennedy helped launch space exploration by promising to put a man on the moon before anyone really knew how to. Also, President Garfield proved that #ScienceLooksGood by submitting a proof for the Pythagorean theorem, which I'm sure you learned in high school and can recite on command.

T.C Scottek has a lengthy article on The Verge detailing the stances of the four main presidential candidates on various science and tech issues such as the Internet, cyber security, war, and space.. Read up, and vote, vote, vote!!!!

Oh yeah, and vote!

Airport Tech: Sometimes They Get It Rignt

One thing I really hate about airports is never being able to find an open outlet to charge your devices. There's always one random outlet located in a far off gate. To top it off, its usually not near a seat, so you have to sit on the dirtiest floor imaginable.

Another thing that disappoints me about most airports is having to pay for Wi-Fi. After paying for the cost of a ticket, transportation to the airport, baggage checking fees, and the ungodly price of horrible airplane food, I hate having to pay another fee.

Check out how St Louis Lambert Airport ranks in outlets and Wi-Fi in the video below! If you can't see it, click here!