Week 3 Midweek Update

Frost on the trunk of my car, January 2006.
People wish to be settled:
only as far as they
are unsettled is
there any hope for them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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WORTH A CLOSER LOOK + TANSTAAFL! + ROCKS FROM SPACE





Worth a Closer Look

The frost you usually see on cars isn't as visibly cool as the frost I got a picture of on my car back in 2006, but in fact, it always looks like that on a microscopic scale. The freezing of water is an amazing phenomenon.

This is a video clip from an old National Geographic special from the 1970s. It shows the process of freezing on a microscopic scale. So cool.

Sometimes the conditions are just right so that the crystallization can spread far enough to be visible, as it did on the trunk of my car back in 2006.



TANSTAAFL!

What does TANSTAAFL stand for? It's explained in this video about where your electrical power comes from.



Rocks from Space

In this video: why we worry about rocks from space.

The stats on the meteor that I gave in the video were outdated. More current estimates are that it was about the size of two classrooms; it was equivalent to 20 to 30 atomic bombs; and it exploded about 18 miles up. It is true, though, that if it hadn't come in at an angle - if it had come straight down - there would be no Chelyabinsk.

More info about the Chelyabinsk meteor strike

More info about another air burst in 1908, also in Siberia: The Tunguska Event

More info about NASA's Near Earth Object Program

A group of former astronauts who are trying to raise money to launch a satellite to look out for rocks more effectively, since Congress isn't dedicating the funding needed: The B612 Foundation