Our spring conference is set for Saturday, April 21, 2012. The location will be Lake Tahoe Community College, in South Lake Tahoe, CA. More information, and a call for presentations/papers, will be coming in early 2012, but keep the date on your calendar.
We will likely have a social event, but we haven’t yet decided on Friday evening or Saturday evening. There’s also been talk of a group ski event on Sunday (hope for late snow)!
Tour of Physics Research Labs. Guided tours of physics faculty labs in Astrophysics, Condensed Matter & Materials Science, and Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, led by graduate students and researchers.
Roundtable Discussion for high school teachers to discuss common problems and solution.
2:15 Break
2:30 Two options:
Three concurrent workshops featuring labs and lecture demonstrations from Berkeley and other schools (contributions welcome). Spend the full period in one or circulate among the labs to see them all.
$20 for NCN AAPT members (includes one lunch ticket). First timers are always free (lunch tickets for first timers are $10). Lunch will be beef, turkey, or veggie sandwiches.
Pre-registration is not required, but will help us know how many people to expect:
(The registration below says it’s free, but that’s just because we’re not collecting payment online. The usual registration fees apply, including free admission for first time attendees.)
A new feature on our web site will be a “What’s going on here?” post. Each month we’ll post an interesting question or device, and ask our members to make comments. The first person with the right answer gets bragging rights (or the voice of our web weaver, Lee Trampleasure, on your home answering machine if you’re a fan of “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me”).
July 2010: Poly Density Kit
Educational Innovations sells a “Poly Density Kit” shown in the video below:
First the bottle is shaken, and all the beads mix uniformly. After the shaking stops, the blue beads start sinking and the white beads start floating. Within about 15 seconds, all the blue beads are on the bottom and the white beads are on the top. In the next minute or so, the cluster of blue beads slowly rises, and the white beads slowly sink. In the end, all the beads are in the middle, layered by color.
How does this happen? Leave your explanations and questions in the comments section below, (click “Comments” if the section is not visible). if you know how this works, wait and let a few people provide their explanations first.
Future contest ideas?
If you have suggestions for future “What’s going on here?” posts, please mail them to lee@trampleasure.net.
The scar from the probable impact appeared July 19 in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, and has grown to a size greater than the extent of the Pacific Ocean. This infrared image taken with Keck II on July 20 shows the new feature observed on Jupiter and its relative size compared to Earth. (Paul Kalas ,UCB; Michael Fitzgerald, LLNL/UCLA; Franck Marchis, SETI Institute/UCB; James Graham, UCB)
BERKELEY — Something slammed into Jupiter in the last few days, creating a dark bruise about the size of the Pacific Ocean.
The bruise was noticed by an amateur astronomer on Sunday, July 19. University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Paul Kalas took advantage of previously scheduled observing time on the Keck II telescope in Hawaii to image the blemish in the early morning hours of Monday, July 20. The near infrared image showed a bright spot in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, where the impact had propelled reflective particles high into the relatively clear stratosphere.
In visible light, the bruise appears dark against the bright surface of Jupiter.
The observation made with the Keck II telescope marks only the second time astronomers have seen the results of an impact on the planet. The first collision occurred exactly 15 years ago, between July 16 and 22, 1994, when more than 20 fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter.
WASHINGTON, July 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA released Thursday newly restored video from the July 20, 1969, live television broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The release commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first mission to land astronauts on the moon.
The initial video release, part of a larger Apollo 11 moonwalk restoration project, features 15 key moments from the historic lunar excursion of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
A team of Apollo-era engineers who helped produce the 1969 live broadcast of the moonwalk acquired the best of the broadcast-format video from a variety of sources for the restoration effort. These included a copy of a tape recorded at NASA’s Sydney, Australia, video switching center, where down-linked television from Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek was received for transmission to the U.S.; original broadcast tapes from the CBS News Archive recorded via direct microwave and landline feeds from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; and kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson that had not been viewed for 36 years.
NASA Television will provide an HD video feed of the Apollo footage hourly from 12 – 7 p.m. on July 16 and 17. Each feed is one hour. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:
NASA’s Apollo 40th anniversary Web sites provide easy access to various agency resources and multimedia about the program and the history of human spaceflight, including a gallery of Apollo multimedia features. Visit the site at:
JFK LibraryCelebrating the 40th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
WeChooseTheMoon.org “The site will plug you into the current state of the mission and has many tangents to keep you occupied during quiet times (especially the “loss of signal” intervals). Keep the site running in the background while you work away at the tasks of the day.” [Thanks, Dean Baird, for the quote]
Our spring conference is set for Saturday, April 21, 2012. The location will be Lake Tahoe Community College, in South Lake Tahoe, CA. More information, and a call for presentations/papers, will be coming in early 2012, but keep the date on your calendar.
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Events and speakers, NCNAAPT meetings & news, Professional Development, PTSOS, _Front page | Lee Trampleasure | 
December 26, 2011 10:52 am | 
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NASA Television will provide an HD video feed of the Apollo footage hourly from 12 – 7 p.m. on July 16 and 17. Each feed is one hour. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:
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