Author: Roland Roberts
BSA Astronomy
Summers are always busy and this one was no different. But at least I finally got to do a little astronomy. First there was the update on writing a curriculum for Ten Mile River to try to get the scouts through the astronomy merit badge. The operative word here is “try” because it’s not actually …
Gravity Tunnels, Falling through the Earth
I think I stumbled across this a while back but I can’t remember where. The classic freshman physics question is, assuming a uniform density for the Earth and a perfect, frictionless tunnel cut through the Earth in a straight line, how long would it take to travel between any two points on the surface of …
Superball Physics!
I’m trying to catch up on my reading by skimming through back issues of American Journal of Physics when I found this one in the March issue: “Impact behavior of a superball,” Am. J. Phys. 83, 238-248 (2014). It’s a fun little article that covers some of the basics that you can find elsewhere like how the …
Testing Astro Video Capture in Linux
I recently picked up an older Thinkpad T400 that had Windows 7 installed. After a bit of angst, I went ahead with my plan to scrub the disk and install Fedora 21. Why the angst? Well, I had originally thought of using Windows 7 32-bit to control my older Canon Digital Rebel XT cameras. They are …
Teach Foundational Language Principles (CACM May 2015, pp 30-31)
The authors point to teaching programming languages as opposed to logic as being a seriously weak spot in computer science education. While the “Hour of Code” has a lot of appeal and can introduce people to computing, they point out that new computing languages are continuously being developed to try to solve new problems. They …
Teach Foundational Language Principles (CACM May 2015, pp 30-31)Read More
Education: What Are We Doing When We Teach Computing in Schools? (CACM May 2015, pp24-26)
This article initally caught my attention with it’s graphic and caption “SCIENCE:Gravity makes haveier things fall faster.” The author goes on to recount her experience with just such a poster in a local elementary science fair and her lack of success in having it taken down. The point: we have started pushing instruction of computing …
Education: What Are We Doing When We Teach Computing in Schools? (CACM May 2015, pp24-26)Read More
Really installing Oracle Java on Fedora
This has nothing to do with astronomy at all, but I can’t find a good place to save this information. So… If you’re trying to install Oracle’s Java on Fedora, after you’ve done,so, the following will set up all of the alternatives links you want/need alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/latest/jre/bin/java 200000 \ –slave /usr/bin/jcontrol jcontrol …
Feeds Updated
A lot of the incoming RSS feeds were dead, so I spent a couple of hours today to find replacements. This is as much for me as for you so I have one place to go for my space and astronomy news. I need to put togther another physics set of feeds, too, then I’m …
So what exactly has happened to this site….
I’ve clearly been on a long hiatus from posting here, largely because life has a way to doing that to you from time to time…. I’ve still be out doing some observing, playing with equipment, and more. But I have two teenage boys now and have taken on the role of Scoutmaster in a local …
NSTA STEM Expo 2013: Common Core and the NGSS
The first talk I attended had Steven Pruitt, a representative from Achieve Inc., and Juan Carlos Aguilar, from the Georgia Department of Education. I won’t bore you with all my notes on the talk, but there were a couple of interesting points made which warrant some comments. Pruitt pointed out that the Process Skills descriptions …