danaleeling

This term I had the perhaps ill conceived concept of prelaying the centerline on a four sheet spread. Summer provides more time to set this up. Indeed the pink line would be horrifically ill conceived. I would completely miss the line. Due to drips, I opted to move the RipStik runway to the east. This drastically shortened my inbound leg. I hit the paper off center, headed further of center, and completely unstable. I was so unstable and off that I did not start my timer. I distributed three timers and held the fourth, but only one student obtained a time. And I had nothing.  The track was not only off the intended centerline, the attempt to correct back to the centerline would cause an inconsistent wavelength and amplitude. Adding insult to injury was that the waves did not start or end at a node on either end of the 333 cm four sheet runway. Here one can more clearly see the errant entry and directional vector. That the pape

The SC 130 Physical Science class visited the weather station to learn about their services and to observe a weather balloon launch. The balloon was prepped for launch. Students present included Sidney, Bernie, Sru, LaPrincia, and Etwet. Loyeesha arrived just ahead of the balloon launch. Hydrogen is used to provide the balloon with buoyancy. Hydrogen is less dense than air. The weather station has equipment that produces hydrogen. As a backup, tanks of helium are available.  The radiosonde is a newer, smaller unit. In the past the radiosonde had to be manually tracked, now the radiosonde reports its GPS coordinates based on satellite data. No tracking required. The large on site dome is no longer used - that contained a tracking antenna.  Balloon release. Ascent Inside the radiosonde data is displayed on a computer.  On the left is a dew point (blue), temperature (red), and relative humidity (green) pro

The morning session consisted of a series of volcanology videos in a playlist . The GeologyHub video requires updating to the current term. A new rock and mineral set was added this term to offset evaporation. Evaporation is not preventable. The students have only ever seen basalt and coral. Black rocks and white rocks. Which is what they are called in the local language. That rocks can exist with other colors is surprising for many students. Although today I found that pumice is called wahnpei in Pohnpeian, which may count as a gray rock.  Last summer the students overly fixated on identification until I clarified on the board. I put this on the board while the videos played. The new kit included a rock poster. Might be amazonite. Thought to be unakite. Could be zoisite - from the new kit. Etwet and Sru wound up with the new kit. Rollin and Bernie. Sidney and Maria G

With passing rain showers and two construction sites up and running from early each morning, I opted to return Binky to the cycad. This worked well enough last summer. Binky is actually the same model of Binky as was used last term. Binky was in a quadruple wrap of grocery and hardware bags this summer. The image was taken with the Pixel 7 Pro and then portrait blurring was used to blur out the background frondlets.  The Pixel produced coordinates very close to those of the prior summer, North 6° 54.544', East 158° 09.610'. I noted last summer that North 6° 54.543', East 158° 09.611' might have been closer to Binky. This term I am hoping inclusion of the accuracy will help the students understand the uncertainty in the location.  The morning board was minimalist. Thirty minutes were spent getting GPS essentials downloaded onto Android devices. I then went into the Settings on each device and gave GPS Essentials the location permissions for which