Year: 2010

The April 24, 2010 issue of Science News has an interesting article entitled "Gambling on Experience" which reports on research into how we (people) guestimate risk in real life. I call it interesting both because it is an interesting social question, but also because of a recent dialogue about the topic of cell phones and …

Estimating RisksRead More

 This year’s festival is the first week of June, more information here: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/

We’ll be hosting a stargazing evening again at Shore Road Park on the ballfields near the 76th Street park entrance. See the map below for the viewing location. Sunset is not until nearly 7:15 pm, and it won’t be truly dark (well, as dark as it gets in NYC) until after 8:30 pm, but we’ll start around …

TV-Turnoff Week StargazingRead More

Missouri is my home state.  I grew up in what was then a rural area south of St. Louis, in Arnold.  Seeing the stars at night was no big deal, and something I took for granted. Arnold can longer be considered rural and in the intervening 40 years has gone through the typical suburban sprawl …

Light Pollution in MissouriRead More

Okay, here is a resource for your next career day.  The American Physical Society has put together a slideshow you can download.  I need to browse this so I can work on my spiel for career day at my son’s middle school, IS 30.

The January 2010 issue of Physics Today’s web watch section mentioned the Sun|trek web site which contains a number of resource for learning about the Sun and it’s effect on the Earth.  The material is varied and the comment about being "devoted to teaching schoolchildren" is a bit vague on the age group, but the format includes a large number of images and other materials that make it engaging, certainly for middle school and possibly for older elementary students (depending on the lesson).  Of course, some of the material is clearly target

Tonight I attended a community meeting where the main topic of new business was a presentation by Thomas Greene, formerly a teacher at Fort Hamilton High School here in Bay Ridge and now an adjunct professor at Kingsborough Community College, part of the CUNY system. The sad part of the proposal is that is is …

Bay Ridge Regional Science Lab ProposalRead More

Mars opposition party open to the public on the south end of the Great Lawn in Central Park.

The American Physical Society has a nice web site called "Physics Central" which has, among other things, a section called Physics@Home.  For those of you who put off you science fair projects until the last minute, have a look at some of the things you can try at home.  The laser and jello experiment looks …

Physics at Home, Science ProjectsRead More